Digitalization at the Family Business Vetter
The healthcare industry is rapidly changing. People, machines and information are becoming increasingly interconnected. Due to COVID-19, innovations at the interface between pharmaceutical products, services and digital data had to be accelerated. At the pharmaceutical service provider Vetter, we too are undergoing change, testing future technology and implementing new digital systems. Our mission remains the same: To sustainably improve the patients' quality of life with the drugs we produce.
Although the digital transformation is behind many of the advances Vetter has made and is deeply rooted in our company strategy, it is not self-serving. As a leading company in the production of injectable drugs, we have a great responsibility. Put another way, our jobs are about people's lives. Digitalization becomes important for us when it significantly and justifiably further improves quality and processes for our customers and especially the millions of patients who rely on them for their medication. Vetter produces drugs that are crucial for many people's lives worldwide. Among them are therapies for the treatment of cancer, rheumatism or multiple sclerosis, as well as medications for rare diseases.
Reliable, efficient and safe processes are the very essence of our industry. The regulatory specifications in the pharmaceutical environment are very restrictive, and for good reason. However, this also means that in order to leverage digitalization we must overcome a higher complexity.
The future is now
Digitalization at Vetter is already being lived on an everyday basis. Our company strategy, Vetter NExT 2029, has been developed with staff members in virtual workshops. Many of the collected ideas and challenges deal with our digital roadmap.
The digital change at Vetter has many features. Within the scope of digitalizing central key processes, the future factory processes are a part of our focus. We are therefore dealing with topics such as predictive maintenance, visual remote services, or intelligent worker assistance systems to significantly reduce standstill and troubleshooting times.
Artificial intelligence has already been implemented at our company with the successful usage of machine learning systems. We are working on exciting projects such as generating text from data - the so-called natural language generation, up to complex forecasting projects in the context of controlling. Moreover, we will rely on robotic process automation for recurring and clearly-defined tasks in the future.
To strive for innovation on a continuous basis is what we consider an integral part of our responsibility. We develop some of these digital infrastructures completely in-house and are, thus, setting up important competencies that are becoming increasingly significant for our future.
People are always at the center
The implementation of digital processes concerns the essential core processes of Vetter. Within the scope of our wide-ranging digitalization strategy, we focus on, among other things, projects in the topic areas production, quality and the supply chain. But digitalization is also advancing in the administrative areas with a wide variety of projects.
While digitalization is increasing, the activities and procedures at work change as well. How can we manage to undergo this change in a sustainable and successful way? This can only be done via people who feel confident and comfortable with applying new technologies. Our staff members have helped shape Vetter for over 70 years. Today, they number around 5,700 on three continents and are the most important success factor of our digital journey.