Bringing Innovation to Production: Maximizing Shopfloor Human Performance

00:00 Quick introduction. Ajit Kunato, our product manager for SR. I have with me Douglas Arnold, who is the program Director for our program. We are Merck. A quick Introduction to Merck. At Merck, we use the power of leading edge science to save and improve lives. We research and manufacture biologic therapies and vaccines across animal health and human health. We are Merck was established in 1891

00:32 and we are headquartered in Rahway, New Jersey, along with a lot of manufacturing facilities across the globe. So how do we maximize human performance on the shop floor and how do we bring innovation to production There are multiple aspects that need to that needs to come into play for this to happen. But for today's presentation we are sharing with you three three top aspects that that

01:02 helped us get there. First, having a value first mindset to having a KPI profile, a KPI profile that not only is relevant to operations, but also it aligns with the organizational strategy. And third, to bring innovation to production, we need to have a robust plan, a plan that not only looks at adoption and scaling, but thinks through sustainment as well. Right now these are based on our experience.

01:36 Hope that resonates with you as well, and we would like to hear about that from you as well. So what do I mean by value first mindset? If you look at our program at all our capabilities, there is a proof of value phase for each one of our capabilities. And what do we mean by proof of value? So in this phase, we collaborate with sites to look at a limited set of use cases,

02:06 and we look at high frequency, high value use cases. Now that's important for a proof of value phase. And we measure the or we assess the value before implementing the capability and monitor the value after implementation. And we try to see if it is actually demonstrating the value that we have planned out. In addition to that, we not only look at value from a use case perspective, we look at value from an enterprise level as well,

02:38 and we look at value from an adoption perspective. What if the value if the adoption is moderate versus if the if the adoption is if we were to sweat the asset , what would the value look like? So what we mean by value first mindset is the having that broad and deep focus on value all through the journey of a capability. That's important for us to get that maximizing the performance in the shop floor.

03:13 Now, within our program, we do have multiple capabilities, but today we'll be talking about specifically about our capability, which within Merck we call as gate guided augmented task execution. At this time, we are in a steady state with value and we are ready to scale. But a quick look at some of the success factors that has helped us get there. From a strategy perspective, we use the bottom up approach where we had the operators in biotechs championed

03:50 the adoption of our use case from a platform standpoint, as we had some of you who had attended Ryan's presentation, we looked at all the use cases from a value perspective, and we found that a majority of the value was driven by GMP based use cases. So right up front we invested a good amount of time getting our platform qualified for GMP use, and we had great partnership from PTC to help get us to that stage.

04:26 From a technology standpoint, we use Vuforia expert capture again a great tool with a very short learning curve. It helped, especially because we use that our adoption approach was to have as an end user driven self-service type of adoption. So having a tool, a platform like Vuforia expert capture definitely helped. From an adoption perspective. We need to have a very comprehensive change management approach.

04:56 Now for that, we again, it's a pretty broad topic. There are certain aspects that we brought into play for change management. We looked at it from a perspective of from the learners experience. We looked at it from a stakeholder perspective. We looked at it from a process association standpoint. And last but not the least, we looked at it from the communication standpoint. So having that comprehensive change management approach also helped. Let's take a look at Gate in action at Merck.

05:27 At Merck. We are leading the charge as we drive transformation and workforce productivity and enable new ways of working through the gate platform. Employees are now equipped with the ability to capture knowledge, learn and execute tasks in modern and efficient ways. Utilizing cutting edge technologies like augmented reality, we are enabling our frontline workers in labs and on shop floors to get their tasks done right. First time in a compliant and safe fashion. Gate is a People First initiative,

05:57 empowering our frontline workers with access to contextual just in time information when they want it, where they want it on devices of today and of the future. Gate is actively being evaluated across the Merck ecosystem and is already driving tangible value to our teams and use cases like knowledge and technology transfer in our Msdc development labs. Digitizing NPS philosophies and Carlow and West Point. Driving right first time equipment setup and maintenance for single use systems

06:29 and Wagh rapid distribution of expert and tacit knowledge for BCG in Durham. Minimizing human error during critical product testing in our animal health labs and enhancing speed to competency during onboarding for our PMP knowledge workers. As we drive towards Industry 4.0 and Expedition 25, gait is not only transforming how we learn and work in our facilities today, but is laying the foundations to take full advantage of emerging technologies of tomorrow. Gait is playing a key role in protecting our present way of working

07:04 and laying the groundwork for our new ways of working. So as you can see, gate is our capability. It's poised to deliver a significant amount of value. Now keep that focus on value sharp. We've spoken about having a KPI profile. Again, different companies and organizations will have different KPIs to work with. But for us, these are the three KPIs that have consistently delivered value. We'll take a look.

07:36 We'll start with speed to competency. This is a KPI that's been associated with almost 100% of our use cases. We can look at, you know, speed to compete and see both from a trainer standpoint as well as from a training perspective, from a for a trainer having a capability like a Vuforia expert capture based solution, it reduces the time to to develop these training assets and thereby reduces

08:07 the cost. Right. And also because of these because these capabilities are available on demand, it reduces the training cycle time. The same reason also drives the reduction in time to acquire a competency by a trainee. Now, from just quickly, quickly looking at the secondary outcomes, not only is AR based training cost effective to acquire a skill,

08:37 but it is also cost effective to sustain a skill and it does all that in a very engaging manner. That's very important for the, you know, the current generation of workers. Nobody likes to read lines of text. So having these kind of capabilities does help engage the employee during training. One of the use cases that comes to mind when we talk about speed to competency, but real quick, how many of you are from pharma? Reason. Well, that's good.

09:10 That's good. Because one of the use cases that come to mind when we talk about speed to competency is aseptic training because aseptic training is something that has to happen, at least in a best case scenario, twice a year or at least every year. So having and that's so important to sustain these aseptic behaviors. Now conducting that training in a very traditional manner, it makes it really expensive. Having these kind of capability does help.

09:44 The second KPI is write first time, write first time. It's something that directly impacts our PNL. If if things were to go wrong, it will definitely lead to discards. It leads to waste, It leads to sometimes the whole batch being discarded. And again, that depending upon how the batches are configured, that can get very expensive as well. Now, one of, you know, one of the things that one of

10:16 the use cases that come to mind when we talk about write first time is kid setup, especially if it is a single use kid setup. If something goes wrong that holds, kid has to be discarded. Now, during pandemic and even post pandemic, when there are supply chain constraints, there has been tendency for teams, manufacturing teams to have a backlog of inventory because if things go wrong, they have to, you know, have to have enough inventory to kind of get keep

10:47 the operations running. Having these improving. Right. First time results in, you know, also not needing to have that kind of an inventory build up. The last KPI that we'll talk about today is productivity. Now, when we say productivity, this is all about protecting the time. Whenever things go wrong, we have to have the SME come in to help SMEs have their day jobs, you know, and if they have to come in gown, get into the location to help, it all takes time.

11:21 Having the AR based use cases definitely helps from a secondary outcome perspective. If we these are modules are definitely helpful when it comes to mitigating attrition, attrition of SMEs, especially SMEs who have been with organizations for ten plus years and they retire. It's R is a very it captures the knowledge. It's a very comprehensive way of capturing knowledge.

11:51 We in terms of use cases, we'll take a look at it towards the end of the presentation. There is one that I would like to highlight. So so from a maximizing human performance on the shop floor, we have looked at the value first mindset. We have looked at having a KPI profile. Now how do we then bring innovation to production? For that, we need to have a robust plan to build the enterprise value. Again, all these aspects need to have quite a few things going,

12:22 but we want to share with you just a couple of things that we felt has significantly helped us. The first one is the business case development, and then we'll look into an implementation plan. Now, business case development, nothing different here from what you must have already been exposed to. But I want to talk about the need to quantify a business state having quantified supporting data points for business cases. Right. If you look at problem statements, if you want to quantify the problem statement,

12:57 data is readily available, but not in a form that you can use to quantify a problem statement. If you were to look at deviations, we have to first look at look for deviations that are related to human error. And even in there you then further drill down into deviations that are that provide opportunities for us to quickly deliver value. So there is some level of analysis and depth that we have to go into the data to provide quantified problem statements, value assessments.

13:29 Again, this needs a lot of collaboration with sites. If you were to ask site personnel to help and provide value, they're going to be lost, right? So we have provided templates that help the simplify the whole process of value assessments. And not only that, you know, these templates simplify it also helps reengage the the site personnel getting into the conversation of value assessments and they begin to enjoy that process.

14:00 Same thing with cost. Again, it needs a lot of collaboration with sites. We provided them templates. Cost can get into . There are multiple scenarios. Different sites have different ways of looking at sites at cost. And we have to look at the device cost, the license cost, and not just the FTE cost. So that's also an involved process, but having a template to support that also helps. Once we have built the business case based on data,

14:30 then we need to provide a summary of of the value that we are going to drive and that we've used a template of this nature where we can show the return of investment. It's a simple chart which shows the play between cost and value across as we go through adoption into scale and into sustainment. And also, you know, based on what your primary drivers are for value,

15:00 you can have a value highlight. Either it is trying to reduce cost or if it is trying to increase the speed of competency. So that's that's pretty much what we want to talk about in business case, looking at having a robust implementation plan. Now, this is again, a pretty involved process. Trying to summarize this in just one slide. We start with a high level roadmap of the you know, what that implementation process should look like. We start with technology readiness.

15:34 We look at sponsorship. We look at the operational readiness. We get into build and deploy, and then we think about how do we have a sustainment plan. So we look at it from a very broad roadmap perspective. Once we have those high level processes mapped out, we then deep dive into a process plan where each aspect or each process of the overall roadmap gets broken down into tasks, into what are the dependencies,

16:04 what are the kind of deliverables, what are some of the prerequisites that we need to think of? For each one of that, we have, you know, each process has got a breakdown of sorts. So that's the process plan. Once you have the tasks, then you kind of start associating resources to each of those tasks. And from that we get the FTE plan. And once we have the task, the FTEs, it's it gets a little more easier to work with the cost calculations

16:34 and cost estimates. So overall, that's how a robust implementation plan looks like. Again, when we start implementing it, we do have feedbacks that come into our overall implementation and we refine it as we go along. So we now we come to the last part of our presentation and we'll wrap it up with looking at some of the use cases within our program. Again, these use cases have generic names, but you know,

17:07 from the first use case that we have is related to knowledge retention. This is a situation we had where there was a operational a strategic pause on a certain operation, and we had just very little time to capture all the knowledge before all the resources got reallocated. And of course, the solution proved to be the right capability to lean on, to capture all that SME knowledge before the entire resources got reallocated.

17:42 Now, not only were we able to wrap up capturing that entire process knowledge, I think it was just three months that we had end to end to get all this knowledge captured, but we were able to then, you know, when when the facility had to restart, we we observing that it would not only help accelerate the onboarding, but we would be able to build it back better because right from the get go we have all the SME knowledge captured in these modules.

18:13 So this particular use case, we were able to check off the speed to competency and the right first time KPIs. The next use case we have was bioprocess. This was an alternate tangential flow filtration use case. This was primarily built to speed up onboarding of new hires. And of course we were able to do that. There were some 17 to 20 odd modules that have had to be developed.

18:43 But interestingly, once when the teams did it, they also found that the use of these gate modules led to reduction in human error and almost made it zero. And due to that, during the course of the year, they were able to conduct a lot more experiments than the year before. So with. This use case, though, we started off with, you know, speed to competency as the prime KPI, we were able to not only get speed to compete and see,

19:14 but right first time and productivity as well. The last use case, this is the one related to productivity that I wanted to call out. Not much in terms of dollar amounts, but in terms of, you know, having continuity in terms of operations, this definitely stands out. This is related to having the most production facilities have automated guided vehicles, and it goes off tracks sometimes. So when it does happen, the personnel on

19:45 the ground have to reach out to SMEs to come help get the Agvs back on track. Now, because we have these are modules, the operators, all they have to do is scan a QR code, look up how to get the Agvs back on track and, you know, get going with their work. Now, this is a difference between waiting 230 plus minutes for an SME to show up to help versus looking at a gate module or an IR module that hardly takes five minutes to get the agv back on track.

20:18 So this falls within the mean time to repair, but it checks off both the speed to competency and the productivity KPIs.