STERIS Corp. Invests in Customer Solutions

STERIS Corp. is going interactive. The Mentor, Ohio-based sterilization products maker is expanding its headquarters to house a customer solutions center that executives hope will transform the way the company works with its customers.

The $11 million expansion project will feature the construction of a two-story, 55,000-square-foot building that will connect three existing facilities on STERIS’ main campus. The new structure is scheduled to open in February.

Company executives expect the expansion to generate an additional 313 jobs and $13 million in payroll expenses. Most of those jobs, however, will not be “new” positions, but transfers (240 to be exact) of tasks in research and development, equipment planning and design, customer service, training, and finance from the Erie, Pa., facility the company is closing. Job transfers to the Mentor campus will begin this fall and be completed no later than December 2011, executives said. A company spokesman claimed the move is necessary to improve service to customers who currently must travel to several locations. “Today, our customers need to travel to multiple locations [in the United States] when they’re evaluating a project that requires STERIS technology,” Stephen Norton, STERIS communications director, told The News Herald of Willoughby, Ohio. “Our competitors have single locations to showcase their technologies…We believe by consolidating our core groups in Mentor, we will be able to increase productivity [and] communication…”

Once the new building is operational, employment at STERIS’ headquarters in Mentor will total 1,000 and payroll expenses will hover around $90 million. The newly-expanded structure will be located across the street from US Endoscopy, a GI endoscopy design and manufacturing firm that also recently announced an expansion project in Mentor.

US Endoscopy is using an $870,000 job creation grant from the city to help fund its $4.7 million expansion, The News Herald reported. The company also has applied for a $1 million Ohio Third Frontier grant to push some of its products into urology and cytology procedures. That expansion “will involve significant research and development, product testing, regulatory approvals and certifications,” US Endoscopy executives said in their letter of intent for the grant. “Significant job creation at the company’s headquarters and manufacturing facility would occur at the end of the Third Frontier project.”

STERIS executives are using more than $5 million in city and state tax incentives to build the customer solutions center and renovate existing buildings to improve organizational efficiency and enhance team communication, coordination and collaboration. Company President and CEO Walt Rosenbrough said the firm’s new customer service center will be interactive and facilitate collaboration between healthcare providers and STERIS experts.

“This environment will…enable decision-makers to plan and achieve optimal facility solutions for their projects,” Rosenbrough said. “We will combine our technology and our people to help design projects that specifically meet complex healthcare facility requirements and incorporate the technology being used in operating rooms and surgery centers.”

STERIS has turned its attention in recent years to creating “hybrid” operating rooms and surgery centers as hospitals look for ways to improve patient care and reduce costs. Collaborations with companies such as GE Healthcare and Philips Healthcare have helped STERIS add revenue and participate in a phenomenon known as “disruptive technology” that is revolutionizing surgical care. Worldwide demand for hybrid operating rooms have grown at double-digit rates, helping firms investing in such technology overcome the deep recession that limited growth in more traditional surgical markets.

Hybrid ORs combine minimally invasive and interventional surgical technologies with medical imaging and communications in one room. Traditional models, on the other hand, have separate rooms for interventional procedures, medical imaging and surgeries. Combining interventional, imaging and surgical services in one place eliminates the need to transfer patients between separate areas, which saves time and can lead to better patient outcomes, particularly in emergencies, experts said. It also leads to better use of the rooms, which are bigger than traditional ORs, and expensive to build and equip.

Hospitals and surgical centers could conceivably use the hybrid ORs at any time for various types of procedures, experts noted.