0115. Innovating for Tomorrow: Sustainable Pharma Facilities and Digital Revolutions

- Unpacks insights from ISPE Facilities of the Future Conference
- Focuses on sustainability and digital evolution in pharma
- Next-gen facilities are efficient and eco-friendly
- Shift to interconnected data systems revolutionizes research
- Tools like Benchling streamline data and asset management
- Networking fosters collaboration and innovation
- Personal anecdotes highlight importance of authentic interactions
- Emphasizes connections shaping industry's future

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Transcript

Oscar Gonzalez: 1:02

Welcome back to another episode of Lean by Design Podcast. I'm your host, Oscar Gonzalez, alongside here with my cohost Lawrence Wong. Today we are going to give you a recap of the recent ISPE Facilities of the Future Conference. We're going to look into sustainability and how that becomes a critical component in your facility design and operations. Understand that the digital transformation that's happening now is redefining roles as more tools are developed to manage these integrated systems. We're going to chat a little bit about networking, where you can have fun, especially when you're showing genuine interest in other people. Lawrence, welcome back to Boston area. How was the conference? How did everything go it?

Lawrence Wong: 1:49

was good. I think all of my jet lag has finally left my body. I was in San Francisco, I flew in on Friday night and then I took a red eye on Tuesday night, which I think next time I'm going to fly on Wednesday morning.

Oscar Gonzalez: 2:03

Yeah, yeah, I get home Wednesday night.

Lawrence Wong: 2:07

It was good, though the conference itself was, I would say, a little over one and a half days, and it was in the Hilton unions in San Francisco. It's like Mac in the middle of downtown. I'm not too familiar with all the neighborhoods, but that's where I saw it essentially located. For those people that aren't familiar with ISPE, it stands for International Society of Pharmaceutical Engineering. I don't want to butcher their mixing statements. I'm going to read it directly from their website, please.

Lawrence Wong: 2:41

They claim themselves as the global industry leader in connecting pharma knowledge to deliver manufacturing and supply chain innovation, operational excellence and regulatory insights to enhance industry efforts to develop, manufacture and reliably deliver quality medicines to patients. They have a lot of chapters across the world and they host great events, either the networking or the conferences. They have online seminars, but essentially what they're doing is they're connecting industry professionals with the sequence of knowledge and new friends that are going on in the industry. The facilities of the future conference specifically focus on innovative next generation facilities and related products and services supporting these facilities. A huge reason why I picked my interest was to learn about what was going on with these new facilities. The other part is understanding how those will impact asset models going on in the future.

Oscar Gonzalez: 3:50

Amazing. I was very interested in understanding what I'm not familiar with, the facilities and the manufacturing as you are. When you heard facilities of the future, I mean you tend to think of a lot of robots or a lot of automations, probably less people within the actual facility. Is that a theme that we're going at of just how do we develop and how do we advance our technology to meet the demand?

Lawrence Wong: 4:32

Yeah, I think there's a couple of different factors that I would look at. When you especially because you're on the R&D space in drug discovery, that's like a very early stages of drug development versus on the manufacturing side, which is usually the scale is much larger and you're pretty close to commercial at that point. Or maybe you're trying to get into the clinic but you need to mass produce the quantity of drug supplements. There's a lot of drivers like who's that are going on the lab are actually impacting how these facilities of the future are being designed.

Lawrence Wong: 5:07

So if your processes are much smaller going on the lab and the technology is available for you to scale up in a way that you're using let's say, smaller bioreactors, or there are specific processes that use some of these more modular pieces of instrumentation or equipment that is 100 percent going to dictate the footprint of the manufacturing process. So that's one thing I think the other thing is to think about. You've heard a lot about sustainability, not just in the pharmaceutical industry, but other industries that have large manufacturing footprint. So there's a lot of oil and gas is probably up there. You think of the tech industry, any industry where you're manufacturing a large number of goods. There's a lot of goals around being more sustainable, improving the impacts that we are having on the environment, decreasing the amount of toxins and all that better contributing to global warming and climate change.

Oscar Gonzalez: 6:18

That's huge. I'm aware that in the area that we're in the Boston Greater Boston area that has it's really a science hub. There's regulations and multiple surrounding towns on emissions from buildings, manufacturing facilities. What was this look of sustainability? Is it something that's a pipe dream? Or is this something that the technology is taking us in our direction to allow for us to continue these super complex processes while decreasing carbon footprint, etc? How does that look?

Lawrence Wong: 7:01

Yeah, so there's a loaded question. I'm going to look at it from the lens of one the government regulations.

Lawrence Wong: 7:11

So these are the non-aggressible terms that a lot of these companies are going to have to align with. So, whether it's local or international levels of pushing out these stricter environmental laws, these companies have to incorporate more of these sustainable practices into their facility designs to avoid penalty fines, reputational damage. So you're hearing a lot about okay, well, how are we going to get to net zero? How are we going to reduce our carbon footprint? You have these 2030, 2045, 2050 goals and everybody is trying to reduce their load on the environment based on some of these regulations that are coming out.

Lawrence Wong: 7:51

I think another really critical aspect of this is outside from just the government. I think there's a lot of, I would say, brand reputation and even from the employee looking at companies. They don't want to work for a company that's just viewing toxins and the earth and making it work. When somebody put it really well at the conference saying that if we truly care about the health of the patients, we care about the health of the earth. So stakeholders are really acidifying these environmental, social and government goals so that these companies are improving their footprint and their policies around how they manage these facilities across the network to adhere to those things.

Lawrence Wong: 8:38

So if you were designing facilities in that way, you're going to attract the right talent and investors going to look at that as a positive impact. Then I would be remiss to not mention the ultimate cost savings. So if you are managing these buildings in a more energy efficient way, you're going to be reducing your utility bills. You're going to reduce the amount of waste that you're producing from the actual operation. That all is going to be taking off a load on your or increasing your bottom line because of those expenses that you incur as you operate the facility.

Oscar Gonzalez: 9:44

So I'm curious what kind of utility bills are we looking at? Because I just got my recent propane bill and that one made me choke a little bit on my own air, but I'm sure that it's not to the level of a manufacturing facility. I mean, are we talking in the millions over the course of like a single year?

Lawrence Wong: 10:08

I think it's hard to tell it's based on. It depends on where you are, and I don't want to speak for other. I think they're all the wrong. I don't know what the natural gas pricing is, but I'll use that as an example. So obviously we have this conflict out in Europe right now with Ukraine and Russia, and that impacted a lot of, I would say, commodities that are sold and used across the world. Right, so natural gas, right.

Lawrence Wong: 10:36

If you're relying on that as an import to support some of the, let's say, you have a boiler that is natural gas and you're using that to heat up the facility and stuff as expenses of that commodity rise, your operating costs are going to rise. So it's in your benefit to kind of be more self-sufficient and be more energy efficient so that you reduce the impact of that supply chain. And so people are using things like solar panels or wind energy or any renewable source of energy to operate their facilities, and people are getting very, very creative. From what I've seen, one of the really good examples is this company out in California Allogen Therapeutics. They opened up a CAR-T facility a couple years ago. So this was I didn't believe it was a complete pandemic, and it's a great example of how a facility is designed to be environmentally sustainable and 100% powered by renewable electricity.

Lawrence Wong: 11:38

So, one of the really interesting design aspects that they have is they have a roof entirely covered with solar panels and they have an agreement with a service provider to have a fixed price on electricity. So, being in California, plenty of sunlight, so you're able to extract that energy and store it in batteries within believe it's within the building and they're using it to support a lot of their operations, which is you know that's. We've never seen something like that, obviously here on the East Coast, because of weather conditions, but there are other, you know.

Lawrence Wong: 12:16

Just because you are in California, obviously it's easier in some sense to design a facility like that but that doesn't mean that just because you're on the East Coast and you're in the Northeast, you're not subject to that kind of philosophy, right? So you do have to get really creative from the engineering standpoint and then really working with some of the utility companies in the area to come up with a design that is adhering to some of these sustainability goals.

Oscar Gonzalez: 12:46

That's great, you know. I love the point that you made related to what people employees are actually looking for when they find, you know, a new place to work, a new employer that you can see now in the offices there's, you know there's compost bins, there's recycle bins. There's, you know, refuse bins, really trying to separate, and you know lend toward this. You know sustainability, you know the. You know exchanging bottled water for the filtered. You know systems that you can put your own bottle into. You know that's become very prevalent, automatic. You know dispensers for, you know, for hand sanitizer, all these little things that they've been sort of adding into the workplace that you know can help, you know, create that sustainability and decrease that carbon footprint. It's super important.

Oscar Gonzalez: 13:44

I want to go into this conversation of digital transformation. So when you're looking at digital transformation and you're talking about the new tools you know that are being developed, are those being driven from? You mentioned before that the changes in the lab or what's affecting the facilities. How much does that have to play into the digital footprint that is, you know, needing to advance? How simple or how difficult does that become for larger facilities in manufacturing?

Lawrence Wong: 14:18

Yeah, so, if you're looking at a standpoint of the lab spaces, there's a lot of very super high tech instrumentation, right? And so I think one of the bottlenecks or inefficiencies that are on the lab side is that all of these very specialized pieces of instrumentation, they all generate a wealth of data that you need to support your timelines, your projects, all this stuff, right. And so I think, historically, a lot of these systems have been siloed, unfortunately, and so you have to do one work in one system. Then somebody's got to connect the data and feed it to somewhere else, or, you know, you go around with the USB stick, or however you manage that. I think nowadays you have a lot of these companies that are able to connect these different sources of information. So one good example, I believe a company is Ben's Point, where they're able to connect this lab notebook and you have all these instruments.

Lawrence Wong: 15:20

Maybe you're taking certain pieces of data to kind of compile into this database. That's much easier to digest, in some senses, for scientists, right? And so I'm going to go back to the other end of it and look at it from a manufacturing standpoint. A lot of the equipment that is located in these facilities, they also are generating enormous pieces of information that you need to consider for your process or your equipment health or your manufacturing execution system, what certain things need to adhere to a specific recipe. Right? All the pieces of data are feeding into this pool of information that you need to use, right?

Lawrence Wong: 16:09

And so I think when I think of digital transformation, it used to mean you're taking information from one piece of equipment and instrument and then feeding it somewhere else. But from what I gathered from this conference, it's less so about that, but it's more about how are you connecting all of these pieces of information and using it right? So it's not just you're using this HPLC here, but how is it connected to this bi-reactor? And then how is that information connecting all the way back to your manufacturing network and how do you make sense of that data? Right? So maybe you have one specific process change. Well, what does that really look like down the line for a large-scale operation? Well, that's kind of what I look at for digital transformation. It's the technology. When you consider the equipment and instruments we have now, that's something that's already connected. It's just being able to integrate that and make sense of what those models look like when you're assessing process performance.

Oscar Gonzalez: 17:07

So Everything's become so complex now because we're discovering new ways to do science. So previously, where these two pieces of equipment probably didn't even exist in the same facility, they're now supporting one another. And so I've seen these challenges that you're talking about. I've seen them in a number of R&D spaces where, well and let's not even get into the challenge of integrating vendor-produced data, the data that's not produced in your system that they have their own parameters, that they have their own output system that usually comes in the way of an Excel file. So even on that front, there is quite a bit of space in there that would allow for digital transformation.

Oscar Gonzalez: 18:37

For how can you connect all of these different aspects of your asset, different characteristics of your asset? How do you get that data in to talk to each other without having this arduous process of manipulation on top of manipulation on top of manipulation? So it's a challenge. That Benchling that example that you gave, is a really great system that's really trying to capture that market and it does help for a lot of spaces. There's still some challenges out there that I think are left to be solved. So how, in the facilities, is there anything that's similar to Benchling, that takes all of the data, from your asset, from that pipeline, from that process, to craft a vision of how well your process is performing.

Lawrence Wong: 19:47

So I'm not aware of a single solution or product that encompasses all of those aspects, just because a lot of these different products are all from different companies. So I'll try to paint the picture of what that looks like. So, if you're in a manufacturing setting and say you use an Emerson product, maybe like a Delta V, which is your process control system that is managing all the different pieces of equipment that you have in your manufacturing process, so it'll help you control and monitor the equipment in one interface and so you can run recipes and batches through that. Another system that is not directly connected to that is your maintenance system. So these are all the service events that are happening to your equipment and it's not necessarily in, let's say, a process control system, because you're using one for manufacturing operations but you're using another one for maintenance operations. And then I'll bring it even further is that you have these other platforms that are available for assessing the equipment health.

Lawrence Wong: 21:05

So one example is your, let's say, you have a pump and you want to measure the vibration of that specific pump. Well, that vibration data is not in either of those systems, and so what you're having to do is take all three of those things and try to paint the story of what is going on with this particular pump in this facility. Wow, there are new facilities that are getting really creative on how to combine those pieces of information. Because, let's say, you have a single graphic, right, and it shows you this particular pump is run for this recipe and you're able to see the process performance. But then at the other end of it, you want to be able to see okay, looks like somebody did something to the pump for repair. We want to make sure that that performance has improved or sustained coming out of that event. And so that's when your vibration data is going to be very useful, because you want to be able to see what's your current performance against your baseline and then be able to publish it that way. So that's like one very good example of how you be able to connect all those three.

Lawrence Wong: 22:10

And so when I think of you know what does this mean for asset management overall, for the future? Well, you can make way better decisions, right? I'm no longer going up to a pump and going, oh, I wonder what it's running today. And then, okay, well, what happened to it last week in the maintenance event? And then did someone measure the vibration, you see how these questions all become one question. And the question is okay, what is the performance trend going? And then you have just one graphic that shows you all those three things.

Lawrence Wong: 22:42

And another part of it is your operational efficiency right, so the time that you have from switching over from one system to the other, you're able to identify these trends and patterns and identify potential equipment failures before they occur. You can optimize your production schedule and then reduce any unplanned downtime for operations. And then the I would say another part of it is really your risk management compliance. So digital transformation provides a more advanced tool set for you to monitor your assets and, by default, that could eventually lead to less safety incidents, environmental harm or noncompliance, if you're able to.

Lawrence Wong: 23:25

Another source of data right, let's say, the fourth piece of data is that you want to see safety incidents. Well, let's layer that on top of the how you're doing in your process, how you're doing in your maintenance system, how you're doing on the equipment health piece, and then the safety incident part, and now you can go wow, it looks like we were running the pump really high and we did some sort of a maintenance event, and the vibration is kind of wacky and we had a safety event and now you can give a better picture of what's going on in the plant rather than, like all that, different sources of information and people are. You're relying on somebody to make those connections right with those four different systems. But if you add them all in one, you know those conversations are very different.

Oscar Gonzalez: 24:06

Right, and it definitely you know. The example that you're providing gives me a line of sight into you know. Now you're able to sort of create these maps that are delivering closer I won't say exactly the cause to whatever challenge, but at least a closer step into those challenges. Rather than you know, we can't understand why this happened and having no data to support what happened prior to a fix, what it looks like after the fix and what, how other systems may have been affected in that, so I could definitely see the importance and the criticality behind having that level of visibility and also understanding. I think it does take a special kind of crazy mindset to be able to look at this entire facility and understand what may affect another piece of equipment and vice versa.

Lawrence Wong: 25:07

So yeah, I'll say. Another thing is that you know, one really good example that I saw during the presentation was with a company called Wheeler Bio and they have a process development lab and which is a mile down the road from their small scale GMP manufacturing facility in Oklahoma City, and they've not only been able to bridge the gap between drug development to IND filing but, like when you look at their facility and they're able to connect these different systems.

Lawrence Wong: 25:40

It redefined what it means to be a scientist in that process development lab but, also an engineer on their facility, right, because you need to be able to incorporate all these different sources of information. And that's what I mean by this integration with these different systems is that it's really redefining everybody's role, because now you have these different tools that are more advanced. I think one of the things that we were talking before we hit record with SmartSoup right, and how that single tool is redefining what it means to be a project manager, because you have all these different tools that you can use. Your job is no longer managing one project. Every project manager should be managing multiple things at once, and it's just allowing these tools for you to be. You know, when you used to be able to do the work of one person, you're able to do the work of 10 people because some of these tools and that's kind of how I'm seeing these new tools being integrated in these roles.

Oscar Gonzalez: 26:43

You hit the nail on the head. I mean, as these you know, look at the state of the industry right now, where there's, you know, yes, at the same time that there are layoffs, there are mergers and acquisitions, and they're integrating new companies, new technologies, and in those partnering companies that are providing the project management, they're not in a space that they can just manage one project. These are, you know, what you're finding is a big company, a large, a large, you know, fortune 500 company, finding these smaller entities that have a niche that they want to scoop up. But that's their technology. They have projects, but guess what happens? Everybody is knocking on that door. So how do you manage all of those projects with a workforce that's like this? You know that's small because you have to stay lean in the beginning, otherwise you run out of cash before you can actually develop anything. So how do you actually do that? And this is where you know that digital integration is so critical and you know that's a fantastic example and I appreciate you sharing that example of the Wheeler bio really interesting and really inspiring to see that type of integration.

Oscar Gonzalez: 28:08

So I want to get back to the ISP conference. How is the networking? We go to conferences. We want to network, we want to meet people. But let's be honest, sometimes it's a little awkward when you see little clusters of people and you're kind of like double Dutch. You're like, do I jump in? Do I stay back? Do I walk in with a fake chuckle? That's a great one, you know. So how was the networking at SBE?

Lawrence Wong: 28:41

Yeah, so I would say so. This conference was around, say, around 600 people, which is, I would say, generally on the smaller end of what a conference is.

Lawrence Wong: 28:52

You'll have thousands, or, you know, even greater than that. One thing I appreciated was, you know, the exhibit hall wasn't the largest, so people were kind of already crammed in. But outside the exhibit hall there were these little tabletop, high table right. So they I think they intentionally made it so that there were no seats, so that you can sit around and be around the table, and so people were on their feet, they had to move around, and this was one of the things. You know, during lunch, right when you get your food, there are no seats. Well, you could go off into the, you know one of these empty conference rooms and probably sit there and eat by yourself, but what they wanted you to do was, you know, just squat.

Oscar Gonzalez: 29:40

Hey, you mind if I sit and eat here with you or stand here with you.

Lawrence Wong: 29:43

Yeah, just stand here with you and that's. The tables were large enough for you. It was just so that you could have like four people, four or five people, and that's like the ideal kind of group that you want to have, so that you can actually hear people talk and kind of have everybody you know take their turn and talk about different topics. So I really appreciated the format and the layout of the conference itself and I'll just you know, for networking for me typically is a lot of these large events you want to be able to Insert yourself in certain conversations that you feel welcome in, right, and I think it you have a lot of nerves when you're going into it because you're like I don't know this person weird or it could be a normal thing, and you run through these lines. I think one of the things that really helped me was when you look around, you find one person by themselves and you just introduce yourself and I try to make every conversation with both work and non work topics. Just because You're there for two days if everybody is talking about work and it's just yeah, five relief when you're not talking about that, because Everybody is human, right, we all have lines outside of work and that life is just interesting and your work like so, you know, for me I want to hear about.

Lawrence Wong: 31:05

You know how did you get into the industry? You know why did you come to the conference? You know what? What do you think was the most interesting? What are your hobbies?

Lawrence Wong: 31:16

Asking questions to Bring out more of the human side, of not just your title or your company. Right, I was very honest about the point in my career. I asked a lot of people about what I like to do the business and everybody goes. Is it scary? You know, how did you know when to jump like all these questions and when you are vulnerable and you are telling them just straight from what you think in your mind. I think it's kind of like you said, right, you are trying to letting down your hair or you know, you're just being more open about yourself and it's much easier to talk that way.

Lawrence Wong: 31:55

I would Honestly be incredibly bored and I would just be very not interested in conversations where somebody is just Constantly taking you about. Hey, here's my new product. There is money service. It's like what about you? But what, like? What are you with what? What is the? You know the human side of all this from from that conversation and, yeah, I thought it was really good. I met a ton of different people that, strangely enough, nobody that I met did the same thing as anybody else I met. So like Wow, these are very like niche roles that everybody has and I was like, well, there's there's definitely room for all this because of how large the industry is and how complicated things can get. So that's that's kind of my thoughts on networking at the event.

Oscar Gonzalez: 32:47

I mean it sounds like there are many facets, you know, far beyond what we initially imagined, with Facilities and asset management. You know the and, for the listeners out there, lawrence will be doing a masterclass on networking, but those are all. Those are all like super valid points. I think the difference you're seeing a stark difference between Real networking and business development. We can't go into these spaces and say I'm gonna talk to people that Maybe I could work for them later or they could work for me, or maybe they would be a future client. We have to sort of, you know, build these personas and you hear about it all the time.

Oscar Gonzalez: 33:32

When you're dealing with with multiple vendors as they talk about, how much of a relationship do you have with that, with that vendor or their representative, or you know how quickly do they respond like. All of these things Come into play when you start to consider who you want to work with and you know the. The idea of networking is just that it's expanding your network. You may not need anything from them now or even in the near future, but you're developing not only just your connections but you're also developing a knowledge base. As you mentioned, you met a lot of people that don't even that, didn't even do the same thing. But now you have this, this, you know, roll a dex from the ISP conference. It says these are very specific things.

Oscar Gonzalez: 34:22

If I ever come into this space, I can reach out and have a conversation and as some really pointing questions, you know, I think that that's a Fantastic way to look at networking, to say how can I Meet more people that think like we do, that, you know, are similar mindset, that have different perspectives and different backgrounds, that we could, you know, riff, you know, back and forth on some challenge or problem, you know, either now or in the future, and, you know, establish those relationships. Because I think, especially in this industry and you know, I'm sure, many others that you know networking is such a A large part of how we're able to develop these partnerships and and develop these initial conversations, for Bringing together two technologies to develop something that may fit an unmet need that exists. This is the super critical components with with networking. So I'm excited that you had that experience.

Lawrence Wong: 35:33

Yeah, I'll say one more thing about you know you mentioned meaningful connections and you know, for the line of work that we're doing in consulting, obviously you know one of the most important things is being able to find projects that Fit our expertise, but I think another huge component of it is working with people that are like minded that we trust and respect. Right, and how do you build that trust and respect? Well, we got to talk about work, but we're I also want to know what about outside of work, like we know how, what, what are those? What are the experiences that you have that Let me know and let the other person know that.

Lawrence Wong: 36:10

Okay, yeah, this person you know has gone, has done these things or has gone through these things in their life and and now that that meaningful relationship and conversations become something else, right, I mean, I can tell you a lot of the people that I met. I honestly don't even remember what company they work for. I just remember their first name and then the conversation that we had. I, there was one person who that's great name, drop his name Carlos and he worked for Snyder Electric and we had talked to me before about some of the stuff that he's doing on the building building management system side. So what that company does is they have this platform that allows you to manage utilities in the building so you're able to see, like, how the equipment is doing, but also alarms and all that jazz. So we have very technical conversations about Forecasting performance and looking at equipment health and how the analytics kind of play into the facilities of the future. Awesome, I found him the next day and we didn't have a single conversation about work, it was more about.

Oscar Gonzalez: 37:16

Hey, are you looking for the?

Lawrence Wong: 37:17

area, like where do you live and and how is it, like you know, living here with your, with your family? And Then we had a conversation about flyfishing and I was like that's awesome and like, wow, do your kids do this? And he showed me a picture of his daughter fly fishing and I was like that's awesome, like to see somebody who's, who's not just you know, this person that works with this company. But hey, I also have these other hobbies and you get to get a deeper understanding of that person. And I remember all of the conversations I had because they were in that sort of Mixer of working on work. So I think, for anybody listening, you know, keep it, keep it light sometimes and don't just be, you know, go, go, go. I just need to find out what you do so I can make a sale or like sell you something. Like that's not the way to go about this. Yeah, but that's O, it's, it's all there. All the good girl with me? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, or is it bad?

Oscar Gonzalez: 38:03

I think that's a prime example of how to really approach networking. We're always going to have plenty of time to talk about the challenges that we're having. That Drive is crazy. That Drive is to improve the spaces that we're working in, to improve where we're working, who we're working with. But it's really super critical to have that step back and develop that connection outside of. This person is an expert with this machine or in this field and really just get to know and understand. Where did these folks come from, what was their background and how did they become successful? How did they even the conference? How did they take in the conference? Maybe they saw something I didn't. That connection is super critical. It really sounds like this conference was something that was absolutely worthwhile and I'm assuming you're going to be heading over there again next year.

Lawrence Wong: 39:04

Yes, I think it's. I'm not going to say 100% because I don't know what's happening in the future, but I think like a 99%. Yes, yeah, it was a very good conference and I think, like all things, it's what you make of it. You can be the individual who is in the corner just always trying to pit somebody, to buy or hire you or something like that, but I think when you go into it, look at it as a learning opportunity to connect with other people and not connect through work, connect through things outside of work as well.

Oscar Gonzalez: 39:39

I mean, there's so much research that's behind all of that. That even goes into how many touch points typically occur before a sale actually happens, and you can't pitch a product 10 times. You better start learning other things to talk about with that individual. Where are you at? What's going on? How do you like living out there? You never know. You never know what will happen. We just have to take these ebbs and flows and connect with as many people as possible so that we're able to really create those genuine connections with the people that we want to have closest to us. That's super exciting, lawrence. Before we close out here, where can people learn more about ISPE and this conference?

Lawrence Wong: 40:33

Yeah, so there's ispeorg, I believe is the web link. Through their website you can find the different conferences that are going on and you can join as a member. I forget what the fee is, but there are a ton of benefits to being a member. There's access to a bunch of different events. You can connect with the. They have these communities of practice, so if you do have questions, I think they use forums to facilitate some of that exchange of information. I think I mentioned some other companies. We'll put the link to those companies in the show notes Allogene Therapeutic in Newark, california, and then also Wheeler Bio in Oklahoma City Fantastic.

Oscar Gonzalez: 41:18

Are these conferences? Correct me if I'm wrong, but these conferences that occur at the beginning of the year, are they typically the forward-looking facilities of the future? Is that a specific conference for ISPE?

Lawrence Wong: 41:32

Yeah, so that is one specific event that ISPE hosts, so they have a bunch of other events.

Oscar Gonzalez: 41:40

Regional.

Lawrence Wong: 41:41

one time to say yeah, they have another one. I don't know if it's in Europe or in the United States, but it's all about aseptic manufacturing and that's a completely other topic in itself. That's happening somewhere else, but this conference specifically was all about facility design and some of the new innovations that were on that.

Oscar Gonzalez: 42:02

Amazing. Today we talked about the ISPE facilities of the future conference that took place in San Francisco. We looked at the digital transformation, redefining those roles, understanding operational efficiency and how connecting all of these different systems is integral to the success of these advancements and facilities. We looked into the sustainability of these systems, of these facilities, how some of them have been really leveraging especially the regional location of these facilities, leveraging solar power, leveraging other systems to deliver key insights into the health and the carbon footprint of those facilities. And then we finished out with networking and talking about how it's not just developing a conversation around our work and our work experiences, but about generating real, true, genuine relationships with someone you may have never met. Lawrence, I appreciate the time and I look forward to the next one.

Lawrence Wong: 43:21

Thank you.