Q. As a global enterprise, what's the global strategy of Drger Medical ?

Mr. Frahm: The mission of Drger Medical is to provide stand-alone and integrated medical systems and services for effective, cost-efficient patient therapy in all areas from emergency, the OR and anesthesia, to intensive, perinatal and home care.

Evolutionizing the point of care is a key part of our commitment to adding value for patients, customers, employees and shareholders alike. Drger Medical’s business objective is to provide state-of-the-art products and integrated solutions that help to reduce clinical process costs while increasing the quality of patient care. Our commitment to innovation and global process business excellence ensures that customers always benefit from leading-edge performance.

Such global strategy will strengthen Drger Medical’s position as one of the leading manufacturers in the Acute Point of Care (APOC) and Home Respiratory Care markets, and enable us to remain a safe choice for the customer.

Q. Compared with other medical equipment companies in the same field, what's the strength point of Drger Medical ?

Mr. Frahm: The brand name Drger Medical is known worldwide for quality and innovation. These are only two out of four core values, which the company developed during its 115 year history of. Besides the commitment to quality and innovation, especially the ability to establish long-term customer relationships through excellent, motivated employees characterizes the main strength of Drger Medical. This is furthermore supported via a global sales and service network as well as the continuously improving global orientation of all business processes. Drger Medical maintains sales and service locations and representives in over 190 countries.

Q. What's the place of Drger Medical Shanghai in the Drger Medical Group?

Mr. Frahm: in 2003 the USA was still the largest market for Drger Medical followed by Germany but with China moving up already to position three in new equipment business. Also in terms of workforce outside of Germany, China ranks third with over 250 employees (status June 2004). The majority of our staff is located in Shanghai, which serves as the Marketing, Sales and Service headquarters for the Greater China region and at the same time is one of the important development and production locations within the Drger Medical Group.

Q. At present, the China market of medical equipment is growing rapidly, what's the future development objective and strategy of Drger Medical in China?

Mr. Frahm: China is on a fast track to become the world’s largest economy. With 1.3 billion people, who all strive to benefit from the improving healthcare environment and infrastructure of new built or renovated Chinese hospitals, any global player involved in the healthcare industry will focus on this emerging marketplace.

The mid-term target of Dräger Medical is to strengthen its role as a true global player and to continue to be one of the top three companies, who compete in the Acute Point of Care and Home Care markets for products, solutions and services. This requires a strong presence in the Chinese market. If Drger Medical is not in a leading position in China in the future, it will be extremely difficult to be in a leading position on a global scale.

A market of such potential dimensions like China does not need only an efficient and dynamic Sales, Marketing and Service organization, it also requires local content. The further development of Drger Medical in China has two dimensions. One dimension is the development of the Marketing, Sales and Service organization in order to market the global product portfolio to customers in China and the other dimension is the expansion of development, production and sourcing activities of Drger Medical in China, to supply the world market.

On one hand Dräger Medical needs a production location in China to enable the company to participate efficiently in the fast growing Chinese market for resources like qualified labor, know-how and materials and on the other hand in order to optimize the logistic costs including tariff costs and exchange rate effects resulting from the need to transport and distribute our products globally. Of course our customers in China will also benefit from the strong engineering and technical expertise in China as they do already today. The anesthesia workstation Fabius, which was developed jointly in a team of German and Chinese engineers proves this success. It is currently a kind of golden standard which can be found in many Operating Rooms in Chinese Hospitals as well as in hospitals around the globe.