PEABODY — North Shore business people got an up close and personal look at Analogic Corp.’s new president and CEO, Fred Parks, at the kickoff last week of the new Technology Coalition of the North Shore 2017.
The coalition, which launched Feb. 15, is meant to bolster resources for tech companies on the North Shore, and its kickoff took place at Analogic’s sprawling, 500,000-square-foot world headquarters on Centennial Drive. Parks was there to welcome everyone.
The company is a major employer of high-tech talent in the region, with 713 employees locally and a total of 1,600 worldwide. Analogic creates and manufactures CT, ultrasound, digital mammography and MRI systems. Its technology is used in health care imaging and airport security.
Parks was tapped by Analogic’s board last fall after Jim Green, the company’s president and CEO for nearly 10 years, stepped down.
“His bio goes on and on,” said Mary Sarris, executive director of the North Shore Workforce Investment Board, when she introduced Parks. “But this is definitely a gentleman who knows medical devices, he knows imaging, he knows technology.”
Parks, for his part, described Analogic as “a company with many technical firsts. It’s a haven for engineers and physicists.”
Analogic nurtures its engineers, he noted in a lighthearted introduction, even though they can sometimes forget their passwords or struggle with how to get a projector to work. Indeed, he said it’s not uncommon for these engineers to talk about “radiation doses, swinging and twirling gantries, and forget to introduce themselves even 30 minutes into a speech. So, I’m Fred Parks. I’m not going to make that mistake.”
Parks introduced himself as “a native nephew” of the region. He’s lived in the area for 30 years, and his mother-in-law has lived here for 70 years.
“I’ve worked in Wellesley, I’ve worked in Lexington. I have had businesses in Salem, and five years ago, as you heard, I was working in California and a company in Burlington bought us then, so my tentacles are deep.”
Noting his Missouri roots — he has a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Missouri — he added, “I can cheer for the Red Sox except when they are playing the St. Louis Cardinals.”
Competitive business climate
The North Shore, he said, is a competitive place to do business.
Nearly a decade ago, Analogic opened a manufacturing facility in Shanghai, China. Today, he said, 250 of some of the company’s best employees work there.
“They are good. They meet their targets. They don’t complain. They have great skill sets. They speak languages. They are extraordinary,” he said. But it was the sixth year of having the Shanghai operation before the labor rate on ... a fully loaded accounting basis was lower than it was here in Peabody.”
“Six years to get to that level,” he continued. “So people that tell you they are going there to get lower labor rates, I don’t have much faith in that. ... Why did we go (to China), we went for access to the marketplace, and it’s worked for us. Each quarter, our revenue in China is growing, but it really doesn’t have much to do with the labor rate. So I would say the evidence is we can compete. If it takes six years to get to that number, there is no reason we can’t compete.”
Parks was no stranger to Analogic when he was tapped to lead it. He had served on the board since 2007.
And his resume in the medical devices field is long. He has run companies such as Enovate Medical in Tennessee, which makes customize-able mobile carts for health care, and NDS Surgical Imaging in California, which makes endoscopy visualization and medical monitors; and Urologix in Minnesota, which makes medical products for treatment of enlarged prostate.
This area’s highly educated workforce is “a good indicator of a future success story,” Parks said. But he also urged technology leaders to think about continuing education for their employees.
“We learned the last couple of weeks that even our new graduates are obsolete in 24 months. ... I ask you, how many of us have made an effort in the last 24 months to refurbish our own skill sets?” he asked. He noted Analogic’s customers, the physicians who use its products, have to go through continuing medical education, something that is not required of engineers.
“We are going to have discipline ourselves,” he said about ongoing training for engineers.
New product
Parks also spoke about a new technology that Analogic and its BK Medical ultrasound business is bringing to market, called bkFusion.
This system fuses ultrasound images with an MRI scan to help urologists with biopsy exams when checking for prostrate cancer. The technology, using predictive software, overlays MRI scans of lesions with real-time ultrasound images, without the need for an additional workstation.
“It is coming to market now,” Parks said, “We should be able to detect cancers much more readily. The procedure from start to finish is 30 to 35 minutes.”
Staff writer Ethan Forman can be reached at 978-338-2673, by email at eforman@salemnews.com or on Twitter at @DanverSalemNews.
