Recent years have been a transformational journey for MSD Brinny, with a focus on data, digitalisation and a future primed for remarkable innovation.
A €300 million investment since 2018 has heralded a period of significant change, both in how the site has physically transformed with the construction of a vaccine drug substance facility, in addition to a focus on realising how data science can enable its future in Cork.
Despite the challenges of Covid-19, MSD Brinny is now seeing the fruitful realisation of that major investment.
“As a site, we have a long history at Brinny, going back more than 35 years, up to the major investment here in 2018. Our focus now is on changing our strategic mandate from a portfolio of legacy drug products to become a more strategic site for the development of vaccine drug substances,” explains Matt Maher, plant manager of MSD Brinny.
“We have put a great deal of time, effort and capital investment into manufacturing facilities and laboratory testing areas on that journey to transform what we provide for the company, our patients and securing our bright future.”
The new investment has brought about a change in Brinny and re-sparked an innovation mindset with a focus on digitising the future. The need for this has intensified in particular over the past year.
“Our need for digital acumen has increased considerably. Due to the increased reliance on remote working, we now require it for many of our normal day-to-day interactions. We are also seeing a change in how we test our products in the lab and manufacture those products. It is all part of our transformational journey. Over the past number of years, the site looks different with new buildings and structures — all of which is geared towards how we will work in the coming years and the bright future that lies ahead.”
Over his 18 years with MSD, Matt has held a wide range of roles, including technical operations, validation, process and analytical development, manufacturing operations and end-to-end commercialisation activities. He holds an MSc in Microbiology and a post-grad in Process and Chemical Engineering, both from UCC. He is also a certified Black Belt in lean Six Sigma.
“Eventually, digitalisation and automation will be at the fore of everything we do. By leveraging real-time data, we can manufacture right first time in a safe and compliant way, increasing the capacity of our facilities using LEAN thinking. We’re also tapping into the power of AI and coaching tools to assist our colleagues in our manufacturing facilities and laboratories are embracing state-of-the-art, paperless technology such as smart glasses to enable problem-solving initiatives with partners globally.
“We are enabling a mindset change to treat data as a valuable asset to improve our knowledge of our processes. Therefore, access to data is at the heart of our digital roadmap. It will allow the site to look differently at how we drive efficiencies, standardise how we view metrics and reform how we spend our time. This valuable information helps identify potential risks and empowers people to be proactive decision-makers. It has also instigated a culture shift where colleagues can see how digital is enabling their future at Brinny.”
MSD Ireland is one of the country’s leading healthcare companies, having first established here over 50 years ago. It currently employs 2,700 employees, across six sites in Ballydine, Co Tipperary, Brinny, Co Cork, Carlow, Dunboyne, Co Meath and Dublin and, in addition, operates substantial Human Health and Animal Health businesses. To date, the company has invested approximately €3 billion across its Irish operations, with annual turnover ranking it as one of Ireland’s top 20 companies.
The Irish operations are continuing to play a key role in the company’s continued global growth.
The Brinny site continues to be one of the region’s largest employers, employing approximately 800 people working across a variety of highly skilled STEM roles.
The site has been a vibrant part of the pharmaceutical sector in Cork for over 35 years with a legacy of developing and commercially supplying biotech products including some of MSD’s treatments for Oncology, Hepatitis C and Rheumatoid Arthritis. The site is now specialising in the development and manufacture of innovative novel vaccines and testing of immuno-oncology medicines.
Brinny teams rose to the Covid challenge
MSD Brinny has not been without its share of challenges over the last year or more with the presence of Covid-19.
“Like many other companies across the globe we have encountered challenges over the last year. We had never seen anything like a pandemic and needed to react and adapt quickly to ensure we first kept our people safe and also continued operations.”
While MSD Brinny continued to operate through the lockdown, a very conservative operational approach was taken from day one: “From the first signs of a widespread virus, health and safety was put first which did mean that we had to pause a lot of our strategic programmes, or else take them into a remote space to accomplish them virtually. At the peak of the pandemic, the site was able to maintain operations with 60% of colleagues working from home.
“We made sure we had all the controls and safety measures in place so that if any of our colleagues needed to come on site for the testing or manufacturing of our products, their health or welfare was not at risk and they felt comfortable doing so.”
Reflecting on that challenging period beginning in March 2020, Matt underlines the resilience, flexibility, and dedication of the Brinny teams.
“It has been phenomenal how people rose to the challenges we were presented with and how the simple things that would normally be taken for granted were achieved under testing circumstances.
“Even the ordinary everyday task of being able to focus on a call relating to a project you’re working on — but now with young children in the background who see mum or dad at home but they can’t understand why dad or mum can’t devote their time to them. Looking at those real-life challenges that our people had to overcome, and still being able to keep many of those projects moving while working remotely was hugely inspiring and beneficial to our company.
“The unwavering commitment shown by the team allowed Brinny to maintain the manufacture of Antifungal and Pneumococcal medicines, which keep vulnerable future patients safe from infection.
“Our dedicated team in our Quality Laboratories also enabled the ongoing Quality Control testing of some of our key oncological products to enable continued supply of the critical product from our sister site in MSD Carlow and continuing to ensure we are keeping the patient first with our ‘safety first, quality always’ ethos.”
New ways of working for a new age of innovation
Looking to the positives that emerged over the last year, Matt cites the ability to collaborate more effectively and efficiently without needing to be face-to-face at every meeting or opportunity.
“The pandemic has forced us to think differently and push our innovative thinking, for example, when we are hiring and on-boarding new people into Brinny or any of the other MSD sites around the country, we now do so virtually. This has created efficiencies in places but highlights ways we can leverage the strength of having such a strong network in Ireland.”
Similarly, to prevent any sense of disconnect that might emerge when people were confined to home for such extended periods, care was taken to have employee business briefings, team meetings and even fun events and ‘happy hours’ to maintain the all-important human connection and counter the mundane.
“We’ve been forced into using technology that we probably hadn’t used previously, and which was good in many ways and made us more productive and organised.
“We figured out ways of working that are different and allowed us to keep moving toward digitisation and electronic systems.”
As the world slowly moves back into a more normal lifecycle, the post-Covid work landscape will most likely be a hybrid of systems learned out of necessity over the last 12 months combined with regular operational procedures.
While the past year brought an undoubted interruption to normal service at MSD Brinny, the main foundations of that recent investment were already safely in place.
“We were lucky in that the heavy phase of construction was finished and we were into facility start-ups by 2020. The journey that we are on to pivot toward a vaccine drug substance manufacturer is well on the way, as is much of the deployment of digital and integrated systems.
“That investment has allowed us to think differently over the past year, to restart the innovative mindset, looking at how we do things from lab testing to manufacturing and trying to always simplify it.
“We have taken those first steps since 2020, but we have a lot of work yet to do in this exciting journey that all of us at MSD are now on.”
Company’s close alliance with local communities
MSD Ireland employees have helped and supported more than 500 local projects and have contributed over €5.8m to a range of worthy causes and projects.
As well as supporting and championing patients’ interests, MSD is also very
focused on giving back to the communities they operate in and bringing real value to the Irish healthcare landscape generally.
Over the last five years, the company has consistently been ranked as one of the top five business contributors in Ireland, and over that period, its employees have volunteered over 1,400 hours to a host of projects.
“We are tremendously proud of our site teams and their involvement in volunteering and fundraising
efforts at both national and local level such as the Irish Cancer Society’s Daffodil Day appeal, which unfortunately the pandemic had a major impact on in 2020,” said Matt Maher.
“This year we took a one MSD approach for Daffodil Day and the six sites across Ireland came together to challenge the traditional fundraising model and organised a series of virtual events raising more than €50,000 for the charity which we are incredible proud of,” he said.
Last year, Brinny also continued a long-standing history of supporting local sporting groups by teaming up with local football team, Castlelack FC, to lease six acres of land to establish a home ground for the club beside the company’s site outside Innishannon.
“Local initiatives have faced a difficult time due to the pandemic and we are proud to continue to support local clubs and groups where we can.”