On Nov. 6, 2000, President Clinton signed a law requiring health care facilities to use syringes and catheters with retractable needles to help prevent needle-related injuries and infections.
The law was no surprise to medical device manufacturer Becton, Dickinson and Co. (BD, Franklin Lakes, NJ). The company saw it coming in 1998 and recognized that it would be both an opportunity and a challenge. If the company was to capitalize on that opportunity, it would have to reconfigure its operations from assembling traditional "sharps" to the new, more complicated safety devices--and do it quickly. The company would have to go from virtually no production to billions of units in less than 3 years.