Umano Medical

Entrepreneur challenge

Hospital bed manufacturer Umano Medical was already on track for a growth year in 2020 but when the COVID-19 crisis hit, their plans went into overdrive.

“We were already planning for 30% growth in 2020, which is ambitious,” says Vice President, Finance and Administration Robert Dion. “The reality turned out to be over 100% growth.”

The company was used to managing crises—its original parent company moved its operations to Mexico, leaving the management team to restart their manufacturing business on their own, with all of the ups and downs that that entailed.

As an essential service, Umano’s first challenge was to organize their suppliers, many of whom were dealing with the effects of lockdown in their respective countries and some of whom didn’t even realize that they were providing an essential service as well.

“We not only had to consolidate our supply chain,” says Dion. “We also had to double and triple it—in the middle of a pandemic.”

On top of ramping up production to meet the needs of hospitals around the world who were scrambling to support a growing influx of COVID patients, the company also needed to quickly hire and train 120 new employees while implementing COVID protocols and precautions to keep the team safe.

To add to their list of challenges, one of their employees also tested positive for COVID, forcing them to quarantine 27 additional employees for two weeks out of precaution. The team took it hard but they never wavered from the work they were there to do.

“We’re a dynamic, resilient team,” says Dion. “Our focus is on people and that includes our clients, hospital patients and our employees. We work to make people happy. ”