While government negotiators discuss Poland’s entry date into the European Union in three or four years, Famed-Zywiec, Poland’s largest producer of hospital equipment, is already meeting and exceeding EU standards of quality.Nestled in the foothills of the Beskidy Mountains in southern Poland, Famed-Zywiec is breaking stereotypes about Polish business and industry. This company produces more than 200 models of medical equipment, including surgical tables, dentistry chairs and hospital beds. Famed-Zywiec is gaining a worldwide reputation for high quality: the company’s attractive and ergonomic designs go hand in hand with durable and reliable workmanship.
Unlike many other post-Communist success stories, Famed-Zywiec has thrived on local talent and local capital. Poland has been flooded with more than 30 billion US dollars in direct foreign investment over the past decade, much of which has been the result of the privatisation of the manufacturing sector. The generally accepted wisdom is that Poland suffers from a permanent lack of capital, and most businesses eagerly accept outside investors as their only hope to compete on the new open market.
But Famed-Zywiec took a different course of action. When the company was privatised in 1997, it turned to a local investor for outside capital. In addition employees were given shares in the factory. Today Famed-Zywiec remains a wholly Polish-owned company.
This strategy has paid off, says Czeslaw Wandzel, president of Famed-Zywiec. Because it is locally based and wants to do business abroad, the company feels pressure to design and bring to market innovative new products, as a way to meet the international competition.
As a result, Famed-Zywiec finds itself exporting roughly a quarter of its products beyond the borders of Poland. Although some of these products go to such faraway places as China and South America, nearly 70 percent go to the demanding EU market where heavy regulation can effectively bar market entry to outside competitors. But because of the company’s attention to detail and quality, Famed-Zywiec products are able to compete.
“When we display our products at fairs, we often get questions about whose equipment we’re selling,” says Wandzel. “People associate high quality with ‘the West.’ It’s hard for them to understand that we can produce products that are just as good, or even better. If anything, Poles have a distorted view of what sort of equipment they would find in a western European hospital. When a salesperson comes here from western Europe, he shows his top-of-the-line products – the equivalent of a Formula One race car with a souped-up engine that advertises the perfectly normal car with a standard engine you would drive on the street. The hospital staff expect similar functions from our products, even if they don’t use those functions at all.”

DIY principle
The production line at Famed-Zywiec operates on the ‘if you want something done properly, do it yourself’ principle. Most of the parts that go into each hospital bed or dentistry chair have been produced within the factory. Alongside welders and painters, the organisation includes units for everything from upholstery to electronics and carpentry to hydraulic lifts. Only a small number of parts are bought from outside suppliers. Even though using a few inexpensive imported parts might lower the cost of the final product, Famed-Zywiec prefers to remain mid-range in its price-tag in order to stay at the peak of quality.
The quality manager at Famed-Zywiec, Franciszek Pindel, points out that every one of the company’s 500 employees is involved in and responsible for the quality of the final product. “The workmanship on every part is 100 percent verifiable. If something goes wrong with any part, for example in a unit that we receive back for service, we can trace who did what, and when. The crew have learned to identify with their work.”
Unlike furniture for the home or office, medical equipment regularly undergoes harsh sterilisation. Therefore, every part needs to be sturdy, waterproof and easy to wash. When it comes to dentistry chairs, hospital beds and surgical tables, the whole apparatus has to carry the load of a human body, at unusual angles and in shifting positions, sometimes in situations where a slip or jolt could be life-threatening for the patient. There can be no mistakes.
As proof of the standard of its production, Famed-Zywiec has qualified for ISO 9001 certification and will soon also acquire ISO 14000. Further, it has gained the right to place the “CE” mark on products for export to the European Union, stating that the product conforms to applicable directives from the European Commission. Among others, Famed-Zywiec has been audited by RW TÜV (Technische Überwachungsverein) in Germany and KEMA Registered Quality, an independent inspection and certification company based in the Netherlands. “They’re completely caught by surprise by the level of quality we maintain,” Wandzel says. “We don’t just meet the standards, we exceed them – and we continue to develop further.” It’s no surprise, then, that Famed-Zywiec has already won the prestigious “Teraz Polska” award for outstanding Polish-made products, as well as the Silesian Quality Award. Wandzel is aiming even higher. No Polish company has yet been a finalist for, let alone won, the European Quality Award (awarded by the European Foundation for Quality Management) and he wants Famed-Zywiec to be the first.

Demanding customers
However, impressive as awards may be, the ultimate arbiters of quality are Famed-Zywiec’s customers. The most demanding medical buyers are often dentists, who invest their own money in their equipment. In a field crowded with competitors from within and without Poland, Famed-Zywiec has cornered 60 percent of this market with its dentistry chairs, and the brand continues to grow in popularity.
Building on the loyalty of their customers at home and abroad, the staff at Famed-Zywiec hopes that soon no one will be surprised to discover that their space-age dentistry chair was made in Poland, by a company competing successfully on the European market.

Scott Simpson
a freelance journalist based in Krakow
photo Famed