Darren Vanderburgh,
Director of Continuous Improvement at Contract Pharmaceuticals Ltd

What do you hope attendees will gain at your webinar?

I’m hoping that the attendees will gain insight into how Lean principles can be successfully applied in the Pharmaceutical industry.  Long lead times and large batches are still very typical in the pharmaceutical industry; this is a paradigm that we are trying to change.

What discussions do you look forward to having with the attendees?

I would be very interested to hear about other successful lean projects related to lead time reduction, batch size reductions or other improvement projects.

What do you enjoy most about your role?

I enjoy working with employees or teams to help them improve their own work areas.  A truly successful improvement project will have benefits for both the employees and the company.

How did you get into the industry?

I started in the pharmaceutical industry almost 11 years ago at Contract Pharmaceuticals as a lean consultant.  I was originally contracted to run  week long Kaizen events in various areas of the organization once or twice a month.  After four or five months of consulting work I was offered a full time position to run their liquid division.  Through the Kaizen’s I gained a solid understanding of the pharmaceutical industry, and I really enjoyed working with the CPL team.  I made the decision to leave my consulting position to work at CPL full time.

Where is your favourite place in the world and why?

My favourite place would be Huntsville, Ontario.  This is in the heart of cottage country and has great memories from my childhood and eventually adulthood with my own family.

What would someone be surprised to know about you?

When I was 16 years old I opened up a sports store named Athletes Alley with one of my closest friends; we ran this business together for 4 years.  We sold sports equipment, athletic clothing, running shoes, and sharpened skates during the hockey season.  We were able to convince all of the major sporting brands to drastically reduce their minimum order quantities to allow us to order hundreds of dollars of product per order versus thousands of dollars per order. In reflection, this was my first experience operating with lean principles even though I had no knowledge of this concept at the time.

Join Darren Vanderburgh  on a webinar entitled Creating a Lean Culture in Pharma by Contract Pharmaceuticals Ltd on 18th August at 2PM London/3PM CET.