Cordis Corporation

Download (pdf)

The Customer

Founded in 1959 in Miami, Florida, Cordis Corporation is the world's leading designer and manufacturer of medical devices to fight vascular disease, such as catheters, drug-eluting stents, and filters. These devices are used in such medical treatment fields as interventional medicine, minimally invasive computer-based imaging, and electrophysiology. After being purchased by Johnson & Johnson in 1996, Cordis, (together with its subsidiary Biosense Webster, a maker of medical instrumentation) now has 5,300 employees across 10 sites in three countries.

The Challenge

Cordis implemented the full suite of J.D. Edwards Enterprise Resource Planning system's financial, distribution and manufacturing modules. Cordis also implemented DSI's barcode scanners and three custom-built applications to manage its manufacturing and sterilization processes. This system replaced the old batch-driven BPCS inventory control system, as well as several other legacy systems. Intelligo was challenged to develop custom end-user documentation and training materials using J.D. Edwards' Content Builder software, and to create site-specific versions for the Biosense Webster Company as well as for the site in the Netherlands. Cordis' super users and implementation team would train the end-users with the documentation created by Intelligo.

The Solution

Intelligo participated in Cordis' system testing and integrated testing over the course of six months, and worked closely with the implementation team to test and document the custom applications that Cordis was building. Intelligo produced detailed, customized work instructions and quick reference cards in Microsoft Word, using Cordis' FDA-mandated document format.

Intelligo helped Cordis identify the users who needed to be trained and the tasks they needed to be trained on, designed a training curriculum, and guided Cordis in scheduling the users for class sessions. Intelligo also guided Cordis in setting up a training environment and a data refresh schedule, and Intelligo set up all of the Cordis- and Biosense Webster-specific training data for use in classes.

After Intelligo created the training curriculum and the end-user documentation, Intelligo constructed training materials in Microsoft Word for each of the 72 different classes that needed to be taught. We built a training manual for each class, using Word's Master Document function to link the various work instructions together in the proper sequence for printing and viewing online. For each class, we also wrote a series of exercises and a quiz to administer to the students during class, and also a training plan to guide the Cordis trainers in teaching the class. We deployed all of these documents on a common network drive for the trainers to use, and eventually the training manuals were loaded into Cordis' Johnson & Johnson document management system for FDA compliance, tracking, and user access.

To reduce the amount of classroom time required of students, Intelligo used J.D. Edwards' Web-Based Training authoring tool to design and build a customized System Basics WBT course that all Cordis and Biosense Webster users would be required to take before attending a class. The WBT was deployed in HTML/XML format from a common network drive that all users could access.

Intelligo also taught several Train-the-Trainer classes at sites in Miami, Juarez Mexico, and Los Angeles California, to help Cordis and Biosense Webster super users be comfortable with teaching using Intelligo's materials, and to help them understand training data setup and how to set up more training data as needed.

Intelligo's Value-Add

Intelligo's experience in delivering custom documentation and training saved Cordis and Biosense over 2500 man-hours that were better spent working on implementing the software. We saved roughly 5000 hours of training time plus travel expenses for 2500 users by implementing a Web-Based Training course instead of requiring students to attend classroom training. We also worked with Cordis to ensure that the format and structure of the documentation we created was compatible with their FDA-mandated document management system.

INTELLIGO, Inc. 2450 S. Downing Street | Denver, CO 80210 | Phone: 303.721.1187