Have you ever wondered how that insulin gets into being? Earlier this month, I had the privilege of touring the NovoNordisk insulin plant located in a most unexpected place, Clayton, NC. This plant produces the NovoNordisk insulin pens and vials for all of North America. The plant has been expanded twice since being built and they are on their third expansion.
The first impression you get is that of a surgery room, not even a speck of dirt on the floors, walls or ceilings and lots of white. You sign in at the desk, then they offer you coffee and water while you wait to be escorted to the meeting room. Before our actual tour begins, we are divided into smaller groups and assigned a tour guide who proceeds to inform us that we will be leaving all belongings behind and need to pick up a pair of safety glasses on the way to the manufacturing area. The environment where the insulin is bottled requires full gown, hair bonnet, beard cover, safety glasses, and booties. So before we head out we don our protective gear (to protect the insulin, not us), I feel like I am about to perform surgery.
Our first stop is the insulin pen assembly area. Most of the work is done by machine, but there are 3-4 employees on guard for anything that may go wrong. The machines seem almost human in some ways: they are sensitive enough to reject inferior product without any human intervention, they alarm when there is something wrong in the process and they keep a count of each pen. One manufacturing line can produce over 13,000 pens in one shift and each type of pen has two manufacturing lines. Manufacturing is around the clock with 2 teams assigned to each of two different shifts. While the Flexpen and FlexTouch pen may seem to work very similarly, the actual “guts” of each pen is very different. The Flexpen has many more parts than the new ergonomic FlexTouch pen. I don’t know why, but that really surprised me.
Next we move on to a very small room, about 1/8 the size of the area used to assemble the pens. This is where the vials of insulin are packaged, clearly a smaller demand product, but on the other side of a wall covered in glass stand 2 people in full protective gear from head to toe, like something out of a movie where a life threatening virus gets loose and the CDC is called in. These are the people who actual bottle up the insulin, thus the reason for an extremely sanitary environment. They are in this glassed in work area for 12 hours at a time and on their feet for their entire shift, not a job for this chair jockey. I hope they have good foot support in their shoes.
After we clear this part of the plant, we discard all of our protective gear and walk down a long corridor covered in ten poster size pictures of employees or family members that represent the Novo Nordisk Company Essentials, ten statements that describe the company culture:
- We create value by having a patient centered business approach.
- We set ambitious goals and strive for excellence.
- We are accountable for our financial, environmental and social performance.
- We provide innovation to the benefit of our stakeholders.
- We build and maintain good relations with our key stakeholders.
- We treat everyone with respect.
- We focus on personal performance and development.
- We have a healthy and engaging working environment.
- We optimize the way we work and strive for simplicity.
10. We never compromise on quality and business ethics.
It was quite impressive to see the company’s business ethics out in the open for everyone to see big as life, not like most places where it is posted on a letter size piece of paper.
The next and last part of our journey requires that we get into all new protective gear. On the surface, it seemed such a waste to have just thrown it away and now have to put it all back on, but once we enter the next production area, the reason is clear – we are now going to see where the insulin actually gets loaded into the cartridges which then are loaded into the insulin pens. There is a special sterilization area for the cartridges which are then bagged. The bags are moved to a clean room where the cartridges are filled with insulin. The insulin comes to the plant in a crystal form that is imported from the main plant in Denmark. Once filled the cartridges take a final journey to the boxing area if a glass cartridge or they are inserted into the insulin pen prior to boxing. If a plastic cartridge.
And that is how insulin pens and vials are made. For me the most intriguing part of the tour was that people on the assembly lines were very eager to tell us about their job. They truly seemed to take pride in what they were doing and enjoyed doing it, truly an inspiration.
I must say I was a little disappointed that I did not get to see the actually making of the insulin, but it was a very unique educational experience that I do recommend.