Fresenius Medical Care

Infobox Company
company_name = Fresenius Medical Care AG & Co. KGaA
company_
company_type = Public (FWB|FME, NYSE|FMS)
foundation = 1996
location = Bad Homburg, Germany
key_people = Ben Lipps (CEO and Chairman of the executive board), Gerd Krick (Chairman of the supervisory board)
industry = Health care
products = Kidney dialysis products
revenue = US $9.720 billion (2007)cite web |url=http://reports.fmc-ag.com/fmc/annual/2007/gb/English/pdf/FMC_GB2007_E_Gesamt.pdf |title=Annual Report 2007 |accessdate=2008-08-29 |publisher=Fresenius Medical Care]
operating_income = profit US $1.580 billion (2007)
net_income = profit US $717 million (2007)
num_employees = 61,400 (2007)
homepage = [http://www.fmc-ag.com www.fmc-ag.com]
intl = yes

Fresenius Medical Care is a German company specializing in the production of medical supplies, primarily to facilitate or aid renal dialysis. It is 36%-owned by the health care company Fresenius SE. [cite web
url=http://www.fmc-ag.com/internet/fmc/fmcag/agintpub.nsf/Content/Capital+structure
title=Capital structure
last=Fresenius Medical Care
accessdate=2007-08-12] The company was formed in 1996 from the merger of Fresenius Worldwide Dialysis, then a division of Fresenius SE, and American company National Medical Care. This sector is very complex, and has many different divisions, each with a number of plants.

Manufacturing

These plants, which fall under the "concentration" division, manufacture the finished products from raw materials, such as sodium chloride, dextrose, and magnesium, to name a few. These all go through a complex mixing process, and then through a complex packaging process. Most of it is automated, with humans only at monitors.

Interestingly enough, the most important part of any package, besides chemical makeup of the substance, are the labels. There must be a label on all four corners of a box of powder. No one box can be missing a label, have an incorrect barcode, be human-unreadable, or have more than the proper amount of labels. This is because of the need to be able to locate and identify any of the boxes as the need would arise.

Distribution

Distribution is where the finished product, from Manufacturing, comes in on Semi-Trucks to be distributed to dialysis clinics and hospitals. These products are then used in the dialysis Process.

On 30 Oct 06, the manufacturing facility (Fresenius Hemocare) in Redmond, Washington was shut down.

References

External links

* [http://www.fmc-ag.com Official site]