Garry brings 30 years of experience in the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare industries, having delivered successful development, industrialization, and launches of new products, facility construction, establishing new sites, as well as building and optimizing supply chains.
What changes have you had to put in place in your role in recent months due to the pandemic?
The main change we’ve needed to make over the past few months has been getting as many teams as possible across Operations set up to work from home. This has been done to protect everyone’s well-being and, just as importantly, to keep those who must stay on site for direct hands-on production roles safe. We had to adopt significant new work approaches, not just using technology to keep meetings going and support conversation, but also new ways of completing physical tasks. For example, new hand-operated assembly equipment was redirected from suppliers straight to Development Engineers’ homes so they could run qualification and commissioning tests right at their kitchen tables!
The site-based teams have performed exceptionally during this time. We kept up with all our demand — in fact, some areas saw significant increases. For example, we helped set up the UK Nightingale hospitals and responded to increased demand from diagnostic kit manufacturers for COVID-related tests, all while maintaining excellent service for our customers. Our site-based teams brought in many new ways of working, from social distancing measures and one-way routes in production areas to enhanced cleaning, sanitization, and modified material handling processes.
Which key activities do you have underway right now that will help our customers?
There are many ongoing initiatives, all aimed at providing greater flexibility, responsiveness, and reliable supply. We’ve achieved major improvements in our customer service over the past few years, and while our performance is already excellent, we are always working to get even better. We look for opportunities to shorten cycle and lead-times, increase equipment reliability and reduce waste, and improve our supply chain processes and data management, such as forecasting accuracy, the IBP process, and related communication and information sharing.
What excites you most about the future of Owen Mumford Pharmaceutical Services?
There are many new drug delivery products — including safety syringes and auto injectors — that are being launched, in development, or at the concept stage, and I find these extremely exciting. Some of these are platform products and others are custom solutions created with individual customers to meet their specific drug or market needs. A number of these projects have us expanding our service offering beyond our core strengths in product design, development, and manufacturing to include things like supply chain management, cold chain management, and final combination drug product assembly.