07.22.21
Rank: #13 (Last year: #15)
$8.34 Billion ($32.18 Billion)
Prior Fiscal: $7.43 billion
Percentage Change: +12.3%
No. of Employees: 94,987 (total)
Global Headquarters: St. Paul, Minn.
KEY EXECUTIVES:
Michael F. Roman, Chairman and CEO
Monish Patolawala, Exec. VP and CFO
John P. Banovetz, Exec. VP, Chief Technology Officer and Environmental Reponsibility
Zoe Dickson, Exec. VP and Chief Human Resources Officer
Ivan K. Fong, Exec. VP, Chief Legal and Policy Officer and Secretary
Veena M. Lakkundi, Sr. VP and Chief Strategy Officer
Denise R. Rutherford, Sr. VP and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer
Mojdeh Poul, Group President, Health Care
The face mask was—and to a degree, still is—THE symbol of the COVID-19 outbreak. 3M’s healthcare unit was thrust into the spotlight to manufacture and distribute its gold-standard N95 respirator at breakneck speed to help curb the infection’s spread.
Last March, the company doubled its global output of N95 respirators to about 100 million a month—an annual rate of over 1.1 billion a year. The company also began increasing U.S. investments to expand global capacity over 30 percent over the succeeding year. 3M pledged throughout the pandemic not to change the price of its N95 respirators, but cautioned that dealers or retailers may not follow suit.
Next on the agenda came a partnership with Ford beginning last March to boost production of 3M’s powered air purifying respirators (PAPRs), which use a waist-mounted, battery-powered blower that sends filtered air into a hood that helps provide respiratory protection. The firms collaborated on specific ways to rapidly combine complementary capabilities and resources to help meet the surge in demand for personal protective equipment, aiming to increase production six-fold in two to three months. 3M launched the newly designed PAPRs in two months, shipping over 10,000 units.
The company partnered with Cummins a month later to boost production of high-efficiency particulate filters for the PAPRs. Cummins’ facility in Neillsville, Wis., began using existing diesel engine filter equipment to make the PAPR filters. After assembly and testing, the filters were sent to 3M’s plant in Valley, Neb., where the company’s PAPRs are manufactured.
At the end of March the company proclaimed the ability to double capacity again to 2 billion N95 respirators annually via investments and other actions, and pledged to manufacture them at a rate of 50 million a month by June.
Because of the explosion of N95 masks in the marketplace, price gouging, fraud, and counterfeit activity proliferated. There were reports of people fraudulently representing themselves as affiliated with 3M, selling products at grossly inflated prices, selling counterfeit products falsely claimed to be from 3M, and falsely claiming to manufacture 3M products.
The company created a hotline to call for information on identifying authentic 3M products and ensure products come from 3M authorized distributors. To help identify and avoid inflated prices, the firm also published current single-case list prices for many of the most common 3M N95 respirator models sold in the U.S.
Last April the Trump Administration invoked the Defense Production Act, requiring 3M to prioritize orders from FEMA for N95 respirators. The administration also requested 3M increase the number of respirators it imported from overseas operations into the U.S. The company was also told to cease exporting respirators currently manufactured in the U.S. to the Canadian and Latin American markets.
The company and the Trump Administration began a plan to import 166.5 million respirators primarily from its Chinese manufacturing facility over the following three months in April as well. The plan enabled 3M to continue sending U.S. produced respirators to Canada and Latin America.
A week later the company filed a lawsuit against Performance Supply alleging illegal N95 price gouging and deceptive trade practices in New York City. 3M claimed the N.J.-based defendant falsely claimed business affiliation and offered to sell $45 million N95 respirators at 400-500 percent over 3M’s list price. Lawsuits were also filed that same day in California against Community Medical Centers Inc. for falsely claiming to be a 3M distributor and offering respirators at inflated prices, and against a Dallas County John Doe defendant falsely claiming to be a “3M Company Trust Account” and able to sell millions of N95 respirators at inflated prices to New York City government officials.
“3M does not—and will not—tolerate price gouging, fraud, deception, or other activities that unlawfully exploit the demand for critical 3M products during a pandemic,” Denise Rutherford, 3M’s senior vice president, Corporate Affairs, told the press.
A few days later, the company filed another suit in Florida against Orlando-based Geftico, which it claims twice attempted to fraudulently sell tens of millions of likely nonexistent respirators at grossly inflated prices. In the Florida case, 3M was represented by a team from the law firm and MPO columnist McDermott Will & Emery LLP.
The lawsuits last April kept on coming, this time against Zhiyu Pu and Harmen Mander, directors of Canada’s Caonic Systems Inc. The defendants registered 3M-Health.com on the Canadian e-commerce platform Shopify, and starting in March, sold respirators they fraudulently claimed originated from 3M certified suppliers in Singapore and the U.K. On March 31, at 3M’s request, Shopify closed the site. Caonic Systems immediately reopened another Shopify site as www.tormenhealth.com, and continued to claim affiliation with 3M on social media. After Shopify nixed the second site, Caonic persisted, relaunching briefly on another platform. Caonic was selling the respirators for $17 each, over five times the appropriate retail price.
The beginning of May saw another flood of legal action: 3M slapped Atlanta, Ga.-based Ignite Capital; St. Petersburg, Fla-based TAC2 Global, Orlando-Fla.-based King Law Center, Indianapolis, Ind.-based Zachary Puznak, and two related entities, Zenger LLC and ZeroAqua; and Madison, Wis.-based Hulomil with lawsuits for attempting to target government officials with fraudulent offers to sell N95 respirators. This brought the number of lawsuits up to 10. Two of the Florida lawsuits—King Law Center and Ignite Capital—were settled later in May. The Indiana lawsuit was settled in July with a consent judgment, permanent injunction, and payment to 3M for donation to a COVID-19-related charity.
The firm was awarded two Department of Defense contracts last May to further expand N95 production. The contracts boosted production to another 39 million respirators a month. An additional investment by 3M to add new N95 manufacturing equipment added another 22 million to the quota, tripling production to over 95 million masks monthly in the U.S.
In June the hammer came down on California Amazon seller Mao Yu and affiliated companies for selling N95s falsely advertised as third-party sellers on Amazon under the 3M brand. 3M’s complaint alleged the defendant charged unsuspecting customers over $350,000 when customers responded to false listings, charging as much as 20 times the list price. Amazon unearthed that buyers had received non-3M respirators, fewer items than purchased, products in suspect packaging, and defective or damaged items. Amazon blocked the accounts on its platform. The lawsuit was resolved in August, with the defendant given stipulated consent judgment, permanent injunction, and payment to 3M for a COVID-19 related-charity.
By July, 3M was embroiled in 18 lawsuits in 10 U.S. states and Canada. At that point, the company won six temporary restraining orders and four preliminary injunction orders from courts that halted defendants' unlawful actions. Online, 3M successfully secured removal of over 7,000 e-commerce listings with fraudulent or counterfeit product offerings and over 10,000 false or deceptive social media posts by last July.
The company’s next report regarding N95 fraud came in October. At that time, the company had investigated over 7,700 fraud reports globally, filed 19 lawsuits, and was granted nine temporary restraining orders and seven preliminary injunctions. Over 13,500 false or deceptive social media posts, over 11,500 fraudulent e-commerce offerings, and at least 235 deceptive domain names were removed. 3M was awarded damages or received settlement payments in seven cases, with all proceeds donated to COVID-19 related-charities.
In the firm’s 2020 annual report, 3M CEO Mike Roman proclaimed the company had helped identify over 10 million counterfeit N95 respirators, and had reached a production rate of 2.5 billion respirators per year.
“At the center of our COVID-19 response has been our people: from the 50,000 3Mers in our factories and distribution centers, to the retirees who came back to staff our fraud hotline, to those who answered the call in Valley, Nebraska,” Roman boasted. “People across 3M have stepped up to make a difference, and I cannot thank our entire team enough for their extraordinary contributions in 2020.”
The surge of N95 orders powered 3M’s healthcare unit—comprised of medical solutions, health information systems, oral care, separation & purification, food safety, and drug delivery products—into a 12.3 percent revenue boost last year, accruing $8.34 billion in proceeds. COVID-related respirator sales were estimated to have impacted year-on-year organic local-currency sales growth by about 3 percent. Some of 3M Health Care’s other units suffered as a result, however—oral care sales plummeted 19 percent from the year prior.
Last May, 3M completed the sale of substantially all of its drug delivery franchise to Altaris Capital Partner. The proceeds were $650 million, interest-bearing security, and 17 noncontrolling interest in the new company, Kindeva Drug Delivery. About 900 3M employees joined Kindeva due to the sale.
Last July the company partnered with Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop a simple low-cost COVID-19 test that reports results in minutes and is feasible for mass manufacture. The test is in the NIH’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics Tech (RADx Tech) program. The test would detect viral antigens and deliver highly accurate results within minutes via a paper-based device. The test could be administered at the point-of-care and wouldn’t need to be sent to labs for testing.
In August, 3M Health Information Systems launched 3M M*Modal virtual assistant technology with the Hey Epic! Voice Assistant in Epic Hyperspace. Built on cloud-based conversational AI and speech understanding gained from the 2019 M*Modal deal, the virtual assistant technology helps clinicians complete documentation tasks, letting healthcare professionals capture notes through free-form speech and conversationally look up information in a patient’s chart.
October saw a product launch born from a collaboration between 3M and Eko—the new 3M Littmann CORE digital stethoscope. The stethoscope connects to Eko’s FDA-cleared software that spots suspected heart murmurs, using AI algorithms to better interpret sounds and detect heart murmurs via auscultation. The stethoscope amplifies sound up to 40x and actively cancels noise, visualizes sound data, provides access to clinical decision support, and can be used remotely.
Later in the year 3M and eMurmur launched two apps for the Littmann stethoscope: the Littmann learning app and Littman university app. The Littmann learning app helps medical students and professionals teach and test heart murmur detection and classification. It lets U.S. nurses or nurse practitioners earn up to 22 continuing education credits. Littmann university is an instructor app for in-person, online, and simulation teaching. It creates a virtual classroom to facilitate auscultation training via a heart sound and murmur library. Instructors can stream recordings of real auscultation sounds in group testing with immediate results.
Also in October 3M rolled out the PREVENA RESTOR AXIO•FORM incision management system. The system manages post-op incision and surrounding tissue envelope, reducing edema and boosting recovery. Its therapy time was extended to up to two weeks (with dressing change required at one week), with expanded coverage area, and form-fitting PEEL & PLACE dressing.
At last year’s RSNA meeting, 3M and Rad AI demonstrated radiology reporting software born from a combination of 3M M*Modal Fluency for Imaging and Rad AI’s technology to generate customized radiology report impressions. Both companies’ AI exploits aim to further streamline reporting—yielding substantial time savings for radiologists, alleviating burnout, and creating more time to focus on patient care.
3M launched its new generation of Hi-Tack silicone adhesives in December. The first of its class is the 2480 3M single coated medical nonwoven tape with Hi-Tack silicone adhesive on liner, touting longer wear times, supporting heavier devices, and offering more secure adhesion. The adhesive is repositionable, flexible, and conformable to work well with continuous glucose monitoring systems, wearable monitors, sleep devices, and incontinence devices.
$8.34 Billion ($32.18 Billion)
Prior Fiscal: $7.43 billion
Percentage Change: +12.3%
No. of Employees: 94,987 (total)
Global Headquarters: St. Paul, Minn.
KEY EXECUTIVES:
Michael F. Roman, Chairman and CEO
Monish Patolawala, Exec. VP and CFO
John P. Banovetz, Exec. VP, Chief Technology Officer and Environmental Reponsibility
Zoe Dickson, Exec. VP and Chief Human Resources Officer
Ivan K. Fong, Exec. VP, Chief Legal and Policy Officer and Secretary
Veena M. Lakkundi, Sr. VP and Chief Strategy Officer
Denise R. Rutherford, Sr. VP and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer
Mojdeh Poul, Group President, Health Care
The face mask was—and to a degree, still is—THE symbol of the COVID-19 outbreak. 3M’s healthcare unit was thrust into the spotlight to manufacture and distribute its gold-standard N95 respirator at breakneck speed to help curb the infection’s spread.
Last March, the company doubled its global output of N95 respirators to about 100 million a month—an annual rate of over 1.1 billion a year. The company also began increasing U.S. investments to expand global capacity over 30 percent over the succeeding year. 3M pledged throughout the pandemic not to change the price of its N95 respirators, but cautioned that dealers or retailers may not follow suit.
Next on the agenda came a partnership with Ford beginning last March to boost production of 3M’s powered air purifying respirators (PAPRs), which use a waist-mounted, battery-powered blower that sends filtered air into a hood that helps provide respiratory protection. The firms collaborated on specific ways to rapidly combine complementary capabilities and resources to help meet the surge in demand for personal protective equipment, aiming to increase production six-fold in two to three months. 3M launched the newly designed PAPRs in two months, shipping over 10,000 units.
The company partnered with Cummins a month later to boost production of high-efficiency particulate filters for the PAPRs. Cummins’ facility in Neillsville, Wis., began using existing diesel engine filter equipment to make the PAPR filters. After assembly and testing, the filters were sent to 3M’s plant in Valley, Neb., where the company’s PAPRs are manufactured.
At the end of March the company proclaimed the ability to double capacity again to 2 billion N95 respirators annually via investments and other actions, and pledged to manufacture them at a rate of 50 million a month by June.
Because of the explosion of N95 masks in the marketplace, price gouging, fraud, and counterfeit activity proliferated. There were reports of people fraudulently representing themselves as affiliated with 3M, selling products at grossly inflated prices, selling counterfeit products falsely claimed to be from 3M, and falsely claiming to manufacture 3M products.
The company created a hotline to call for information on identifying authentic 3M products and ensure products come from 3M authorized distributors. To help identify and avoid inflated prices, the firm also published current single-case list prices for many of the most common 3M N95 respirator models sold in the U.S.
Last April the Trump Administration invoked the Defense Production Act, requiring 3M to prioritize orders from FEMA for N95 respirators. The administration also requested 3M increase the number of respirators it imported from overseas operations into the U.S. The company was also told to cease exporting respirators currently manufactured in the U.S. to the Canadian and Latin American markets.
The company and the Trump Administration began a plan to import 166.5 million respirators primarily from its Chinese manufacturing facility over the following three months in April as well. The plan enabled 3M to continue sending U.S. produced respirators to Canada and Latin America.
A week later the company filed a lawsuit against Performance Supply alleging illegal N95 price gouging and deceptive trade practices in New York City. 3M claimed the N.J.-based defendant falsely claimed business affiliation and offered to sell $45 million N95 respirators at 400-500 percent over 3M’s list price. Lawsuits were also filed that same day in California against Community Medical Centers Inc. for falsely claiming to be a 3M distributor and offering respirators at inflated prices, and against a Dallas County John Doe defendant falsely claiming to be a “3M Company Trust Account” and able to sell millions of N95 respirators at inflated prices to New York City government officials.
“3M does not—and will not—tolerate price gouging, fraud, deception, or other activities that unlawfully exploit the demand for critical 3M products during a pandemic,” Denise Rutherford, 3M’s senior vice president, Corporate Affairs, told the press.
A few days later, the company filed another suit in Florida against Orlando-based Geftico, which it claims twice attempted to fraudulently sell tens of millions of likely nonexistent respirators at grossly inflated prices. In the Florida case, 3M was represented by a team from the law firm and MPO columnist McDermott Will & Emery LLP.
The lawsuits last April kept on coming, this time against Zhiyu Pu and Harmen Mander, directors of Canada’s Caonic Systems Inc. The defendants registered 3M-Health.com on the Canadian e-commerce platform Shopify, and starting in March, sold respirators they fraudulently claimed originated from 3M certified suppliers in Singapore and the U.K. On March 31, at 3M’s request, Shopify closed the site. Caonic Systems immediately reopened another Shopify site as www.tormenhealth.com, and continued to claim affiliation with 3M on social media. After Shopify nixed the second site, Caonic persisted, relaunching briefly on another platform. Caonic was selling the respirators for $17 each, over five times the appropriate retail price.
The beginning of May saw another flood of legal action: 3M slapped Atlanta, Ga.-based Ignite Capital; St. Petersburg, Fla-based TAC2 Global, Orlando-Fla.-based King Law Center, Indianapolis, Ind.-based Zachary Puznak, and two related entities, Zenger LLC and ZeroAqua; and Madison, Wis.-based Hulomil with lawsuits for attempting to target government officials with fraudulent offers to sell N95 respirators. This brought the number of lawsuits up to 10. Two of the Florida lawsuits—King Law Center and Ignite Capital—were settled later in May. The Indiana lawsuit was settled in July with a consent judgment, permanent injunction, and payment to 3M for donation to a COVID-19-related charity.
The firm was awarded two Department of Defense contracts last May to further expand N95 production. The contracts boosted production to another 39 million respirators a month. An additional investment by 3M to add new N95 manufacturing equipment added another 22 million to the quota, tripling production to over 95 million masks monthly in the U.S.
In June the hammer came down on California Amazon seller Mao Yu and affiliated companies for selling N95s falsely advertised as third-party sellers on Amazon under the 3M brand. 3M’s complaint alleged the defendant charged unsuspecting customers over $350,000 when customers responded to false listings, charging as much as 20 times the list price. Amazon unearthed that buyers had received non-3M respirators, fewer items than purchased, products in suspect packaging, and defective or damaged items. Amazon blocked the accounts on its platform. The lawsuit was resolved in August, with the defendant given stipulated consent judgment, permanent injunction, and payment to 3M for a COVID-19 related-charity.
By July, 3M was embroiled in 18 lawsuits in 10 U.S. states and Canada. At that point, the company won six temporary restraining orders and four preliminary injunction orders from courts that halted defendants' unlawful actions. Online, 3M successfully secured removal of over 7,000 e-commerce listings with fraudulent or counterfeit product offerings and over 10,000 false or deceptive social media posts by last July.
The company’s next report regarding N95 fraud came in October. At that time, the company had investigated over 7,700 fraud reports globally, filed 19 lawsuits, and was granted nine temporary restraining orders and seven preliminary injunctions. Over 13,500 false or deceptive social media posts, over 11,500 fraudulent e-commerce offerings, and at least 235 deceptive domain names were removed. 3M was awarded damages or received settlement payments in seven cases, with all proceeds donated to COVID-19 related-charities.
In the firm’s 2020 annual report, 3M CEO Mike Roman proclaimed the company had helped identify over 10 million counterfeit N95 respirators, and had reached a production rate of 2.5 billion respirators per year.
“At the center of our COVID-19 response has been our people: from the 50,000 3Mers in our factories and distribution centers, to the retirees who came back to staff our fraud hotline, to those who answered the call in Valley, Nebraska,” Roman boasted. “People across 3M have stepped up to make a difference, and I cannot thank our entire team enough for their extraordinary contributions in 2020.”
The surge of N95 orders powered 3M’s healthcare unit—comprised of medical solutions, health information systems, oral care, separation & purification, food safety, and drug delivery products—into a 12.3 percent revenue boost last year, accruing $8.34 billion in proceeds. COVID-related respirator sales were estimated to have impacted year-on-year organic local-currency sales growth by about 3 percent. Some of 3M Health Care’s other units suffered as a result, however—oral care sales plummeted 19 percent from the year prior.
Last May, 3M completed the sale of substantially all of its drug delivery franchise to Altaris Capital Partner. The proceeds were $650 million, interest-bearing security, and 17 noncontrolling interest in the new company, Kindeva Drug Delivery. About 900 3M employees joined Kindeva due to the sale.
Last July the company partnered with Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop a simple low-cost COVID-19 test that reports results in minutes and is feasible for mass manufacture. The test is in the NIH’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics Tech (RADx Tech) program. The test would detect viral antigens and deliver highly accurate results within minutes via a paper-based device. The test could be administered at the point-of-care and wouldn’t need to be sent to labs for testing.
In August, 3M Health Information Systems launched 3M M*Modal virtual assistant technology with the Hey Epic! Voice Assistant in Epic Hyperspace. Built on cloud-based conversational AI and speech understanding gained from the 2019 M*Modal deal, the virtual assistant technology helps clinicians complete documentation tasks, letting healthcare professionals capture notes through free-form speech and conversationally look up information in a patient’s chart.
October saw a product launch born from a collaboration between 3M and Eko—the new 3M Littmann CORE digital stethoscope. The stethoscope connects to Eko’s FDA-cleared software that spots suspected heart murmurs, using AI algorithms to better interpret sounds and detect heart murmurs via auscultation. The stethoscope amplifies sound up to 40x and actively cancels noise, visualizes sound data, provides access to clinical decision support, and can be used remotely.
Later in the year 3M and eMurmur launched two apps for the Littmann stethoscope: the Littmann learning app and Littman university app. The Littmann learning app helps medical students and professionals teach and test heart murmur detection and classification. It lets U.S. nurses or nurse practitioners earn up to 22 continuing education credits. Littmann university is an instructor app for in-person, online, and simulation teaching. It creates a virtual classroom to facilitate auscultation training via a heart sound and murmur library. Instructors can stream recordings of real auscultation sounds in group testing with immediate results.
Also in October 3M rolled out the PREVENA RESTOR AXIO•FORM incision management system. The system manages post-op incision and surrounding tissue envelope, reducing edema and boosting recovery. Its therapy time was extended to up to two weeks (with dressing change required at one week), with expanded coverage area, and form-fitting PEEL & PLACE dressing.
At last year’s RSNA meeting, 3M and Rad AI demonstrated radiology reporting software born from a combination of 3M M*Modal Fluency for Imaging and Rad AI’s technology to generate customized radiology report impressions. Both companies’ AI exploits aim to further streamline reporting—yielding substantial time savings for radiologists, alleviating burnout, and creating more time to focus on patient care.
3M launched its new generation of Hi-Tack silicone adhesives in December. The first of its class is the 2480 3M single coated medical nonwoven tape with Hi-Tack silicone adhesive on liner, touting longer wear times, supporting heavier devices, and offering more secure adhesion. The adhesive is repositionable, flexible, and conformable to work well with continuous glucose monitoring systems, wearable monitors, sleep devices, and incontinence devices.