BOTHELL – Philips Medical Systems will lay off up to 150 employees in Bothell next year as the company tries to streamline its ultrasound manufacturing.
The company also announced Thursday that it intends to sell its circuit board manufacturing division, which could result in additional job losses locally.
One of Snohomish County’s largest private employers, Philips employs about 1,700 people in Bothell’s Canyon Park area, which serves as the Dutch company’s worldwide center for ultrasound products.
Nearly all of the job cuts will involve employees who make transducers, the hand-held probes that are used with ultrasound machines, spokesman Steve Kelly said.
“It’s a restructuring of our transducer manufacturing and transducer research and development teams,” he said. Philips employees in Reedsville, Pa., and Andover, Mass., also make transducers, he said. “We have people making the products in three places.”
To improve efficiency, the Bothell transducer manufacturing and development unit will move, in all likelihood, to Pennsylvania. The layoff of about 130 full-time and 20 part-time employees in that department is scheduled to begin in January.
Philips hopes to have the layoffs and changes finished by September 2005.
Meanwhile, Philips will stop making its own printed circuit boards for use in ultrasound machines. At present, the company is in negotiations to sell that operation to another unnamed firm.
If that deal goes through, there’s a chance that local employees would be able to continue working in this area for the new company. Philips officials wouldn’t say how many employees build circuit boards for it in Bothell.
Philips Medical Systems gained its local presence and a large position in the ultrasound market by buying Bothell-based ATL Ultrasound in 1998.
In 2003, Philips was second in U.S. ultrasound sales, according to annual rankings from Klein Biomedical Consultants. Siemens ranked first in the sector, which saw total revenues top $1.2 billion last year.
Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com.
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