The Potential to Make a Difference: Danaher

“Danaher’s innovative companies are developing leading-edge diagnostic and dental tools, advancing life-saving scientific research and protecting our global food and water supplies.”

Danaher is a global science and technology innovator committed to helping its customers solve complex challenges and improve quality of life around the world. A global network of more than 20 operating companies, the firm drives meaningful innovation in some of today’s most dynamic industries through its operating companies in five strategic platforms: Life Sciences, Diagnostics, Dental, Water Quality and Product Identification. The engine at the heart of Danaher’s success is the Danaher Business System (DBS), a set of tools that enables continuous improvement around lean, growth and leadership. Through the ingenuity of its people, the power of DBS and the impact of its meaningful technologies, Danaher helps realize life’s potential in itself selves and for those it serves.

Danaher: The Potential to Outperform

It started as an idea for a better way, but like all powerful ideas, it evolved into a passion. It’s why at Danaher, we view every challenge as an opportunity. And it’s the reason Danaher is on a constant quest to make things better—for its customers, the company, and the world. The company is a diverse team of people and operating companies, each with unique missions and challenges. Yet, it is united by its Shared Purpose, which directs how Danaher lives out every day to achieve its most ambitious goals.

Danaher’s Shared Purpose confirms its commitment to helping its customers achieve amazing things and the high standards by which Danaher measures its own success. The impact of the Shared Purpose goes beyond Danaher. It’s an opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to something larger than ourselves.

“Helping Realize Life’s Potential is what we’re doing, every day, on a global scale. Think about our businesses and the impact we have: providing clean water, advancing scientific research and personal health, ensuring product safety. Every day, we’re helping improve quality of life around the world.” Said Tom Joyce, President, and Chief Executive Officer.

How a swift-flowing river inspired a new kind of company and shaped its course!

Danaher takes its name from a tributary of the South Fork Flat Head River in western Montana. In the early 1980s, this was the setting for the fishing trip where Steven and Mitchell Rales envisioned a new kind of manufacturing company—one dedicated to continuous improvement and customer satisfaction. The root “Dana” is an ancient Celtic word meaning “swift flowing,” an apt descriptor for the nimble mindset and rapid flow of innovation that has defined Danaher for decades.

The company had its origins as a real estate investment trust (DMG, Inc., founded in 1969 and renamed Diversified Mortgage Investors, Inc. in 1978). But after adopting a new name in 1984, refocusing on manufacturing and being exposed to kaizen, the Japanese business philosophy of continuous improvement, Danaher began to take shape.

Danaher was one of the first companies in North America to adopt kaizen. The practice led to the development of the Danaher Business System and continues to guide the culture, at the heart of the company’s five core values.

Evolution and growth

In its early days, Danaher consisted of a group of discrete, manufacturing businesses. In the mid-1990s, this fragmented structure was transformed into one built around strategic platforms, each with sustainable competitive advantages in sizeable global markets. Over the next decade, the company established leadership in the markets that define it today, beginning with water in 1998 and followed by product identification (2001), dental (2004), diagnostics (2006) and life sciences (2009).

In 2015, Danaher announced that many of its industrial businesses would be spun out to form an independent, publicly traded company, Fortive. The separation supports clear focus on driving meaningful innovation in science and technology, and on continuing to build an unmatched portfolio strategically positioned for growth and impact.

Danaher Business System (DBS)

Danaher is firmly committed to building its business with integrity. The company is known and respected for dealing honestly and fairly with its investors, suppliers, partners, customers, associates, and competitors. Success at Danaher doesn’t happen by accident. The company has a proven system for achieving it. Called as the Danaher Business System (DBS), it drives every aspect of Danaher culture and performance.

In the mid-1980s, a Danaher operating company faced with intensifying competition launched an improvement effort based on the then-new principles of lean manufacturing. The initiative succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations—reinforcing the operating company’s industry leadership and bringing forth the Danaher Business System.

Fuelled by Danaher’s core values, the DBS engine drives the company through a never-ending cycle of change and improvement: exceptional PEOPLE develop outstanding PLANS and execute them using world-class tools to construct sustainable PROCESSES, resulting in superior PERFORMANCE. Superior performance and high expectations attract exceptional people, who continue the cycle. Guiding all efforts is a simple philosophy rooted in four customer-facing priorities:

Quality, Delivery, Cost, and Innovation.

Danaher’s proven system drives performance. The company is proud to be a Fortune 150 company, and its stock has outperformed the S&P 500 Index by more than 2,000 percent over the past 20 years.

We use DBS to guide what we do, measure how well we execute, and create options for doing even better—including improving DBS itself. 

Sneak peak at Danaher’s businesses

Danaher companies are committed to improving quality of life around the world by tackling their customers’ most complex challenges.

Environmental & applied solutions: From innovative consumer packaging to drinking water purification, Danaher’s Environmental and Applied Solutions businesses protect precious resources and keep our global food and water supplies safe. Its Product Identification businesses touch consumer, industrial and pharmaceutical products throughout the supply chain to ensure freshness, consistency, and accurate labeling and tracking. And the company’s Water Quality businesses deliver precision instrumentation and advanced purification technology to help analyze, treat and manage the world’s water, from municipal and wastewater treatment facilities to lakes, streams, and oceans.

Dental: If you have ever sat in a dentist’s chair, your experience was likely made better by Danaher businesses. Its precision tools and powerful lights help clinicians work accurately and efficiently. The company’s software powers comprehensive, digital diagnostics and treatment planning to keep teeth and gums healthy. Its advanced restoratives, implants and orthodontic offerings help correct smiles quickly and safely. Danaher’s Dental companies are committed to making dental care increasingly safe, comfortable and effective around the globe.

Life sciences: Every day, scientists around the world are tackling chronic diseases and infections at the cellular level to understand causes, identify treatments and test new drugs and vaccines. Danaher’s Life Sciences companies make this leading-edge scientific research possible at clinical research facilities, academic institutions, and government agencies. Its capabilities extend beyond research with the world’s most advanced filtration, separation and purification technologies, which power the creation of biopharmaceuticals, microelectronics and more.

Diagnostics: Wherever health care happens—from a family physician’s office to leading trauma hospitals, laboratories, and critical care units, Danaher’s Diagnostics businesses safeguard patient health and improve diagnostic confidence with the most advanced tools and software available. As our global population expands, these innovative companies help the medical field keep pace through powerful preventative and predictive care, automated processes and mobile equipment.

“Many companies talk about changing the world, but at Danaher, we live it every day.”

Corporate Social Responsibility is deeply ingrained in Danaher’s culture and work, and has been for decades. At a global level, Danaher’s innovation improves quality of life in a meaningful way. Its businesses advance lifesaving research, improve health and safety, and promote environmental stewardship by reducing packaging waste, protecting our water supply and defending fragile ecosystems.

At a community level, Danaher teams take an active role in causes close to their hearts. “Danaher embraces corporate social responsibility as it does any other challenge: by setting clear and measurable objectives, by being candid about our progress and by ensuring meaningful ownership at the leadership level.” Says, Brian Ellis, Senior Vice President, and General Counsel

At a corporate level, Danaher’s commitment takes the form of doing business with unfailing honesty and integrity. The company invests in the growth and development of its people, with meaningful action towards a culture of Diversity and Inclusion. It ensures safe working conditions through its Environment, Health & Safety programs, continuously improved by the Danaher Business System. Danaher extends its impact by supporting a range of science and technology education, healthcare research and disaster relief causes that align with its efforts to improve quality of life worldwide.

The Roadmap Ahead

Today, Danaher is a global science and technology innovator committed to helping customers solve complex challenges and improving quality of life around the world. The company’s trusted brands hold unparalleled leadership positions in diagnostics, life sciences, dental and environmental and applied solutions. With more than 30 operating companies, its globally diverse team of 59,000 associates is united by a shared purpose: to help realize life’s potential.

“I see our future as a bright one. We have a terrific team of hard-working, dedicated associates around the world. We have exciting new products coming out every day providing customers with new and innovative solutions to their daily work.” Added Tom Joyce.

Danaher has never strayed from the clarity of its intention or the inspiration of that swift-flowing river. The company is adapt quickly to the changing flow of business and the evolution of technology, but its guiding principles—continuous improvement and customer satisfaction—remain rock solid.

Commend the Fearless Leader

Thomas P. Joyce, Jr., President, and CEO: Tom Joyce is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Danaher Corporation. Since September of 2014, Tom has led Danaher’s $17B global, multi-industry portfolio of businesses. With the help of Danaher’s 60,000 associates worldwide, he has strengthened Danaher’s focus as a leading science and technology company through the strategic acquisition of more than two dozen companies, and the spin-off of Fortive Corporation into an independent, publicly traded company.

Tom brings more than 25 years of deep and diverse Danaher leadership experience to his role. Since joining Danaher in 1989, Tom has held progressive leadership roles in marketing, manufacturing and general management. Throughout his tenure, Tom has played a key role in developing and evolving

the Danaher Business System, the corporation’s proprietary toolset for customer-centric continuous improvement. A dedicated people leader, Tom has also spearheaded far-reaching efforts to align the company and culture around a shared purpose and to build a deeply engaged workforce at all levels.

Before joining Danaher, Tom spent seven years in the manufacturing practice group at Andersen Consulting. He earned a B.S. in Economics from the College of the Holy Cross, where he now sits on the Board of Trustees.

“We’ve always believed that the best team wins. But we’ve learned that the best team is also the most engaged team. The best, most engaged team is deeply committed to its organization’s purpose, its reason for being.”