[00:00:00] Brandy: Hi, and welcome to Katalyze AI, the series where we unravel the intricacies of biomanufacturing. Join us as we explore the hurdles, innovations, and visionary ideas shaping the future of this dynamic field with some of the brightest minds in the industry. Thank you for joining us on this journey. We're glad you're here.

[00:00:21] Brandy: I'm really excited to be joined today by Chris Calabretta. He is a strategic executive leader in procurement and supply chain. Chris has worked with fortune 500 companies, smaller organizations, has just a wealth of experience and knowledge and really excited to have him here today. Thank you, Chris.

[00:00:42] Chris: Thank you, Brandy. Great to be here.

[00:00:45] Brandy: So we talked a little bit before we decided to push record here and, you know, You've had quite a, a fascinating career in supply chain and procurement within the biomanufacturing industry specifically. Could you just talk to us a little bit about some of, you know, the key lessons, some of the key things that you've learned throughout this journey, particularly, particularly with your time with Johnson and Johnson and other pharmaceutical companies?

[00:01:14] Chris: Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, with J& J, my career was. Let's split up really between 2 main areas. 1 was 1st, half of my career was all around supply chain and logistics and warehousing and distribution and manufacturing project management and planning. So kind of end to end of the whole. Plan, source, make, deliver for supply chain.

[00:01:36] Chris: Um, spent a lot of time in that with J and J, but then there was a tipping point in my career there where I moved over into procurement, um, and became a, you know, low level, uh, procurement manager for non inventory and capital, but then started moving over into other areas and really started launching my career in procurement through a marketing.

[00:02:00] Chris: And then that role led to becoming a VP of a large global organization for J and J managing a significant amount of spend and. really having large teams. I then moved back into supply chain world, but in a procurement type role reporting into what we had as the perennials team or the biologics and vaccines team for Johnson Johnson, where I sat on the board for the supply chain team and was just the procurement guy at the supply chain table that was able to bring both some a history of supply chain, but also, um, I relived and revised.

[00:02:36] Chris: Life of procurement now that I was able to support the supply chain team and we grew through went through some very significant times there because at the point when I came back in, it was a small biologics procurement team, but we're handling probably in excess of 25 billion dollars in potential sales and it was just going to continue to grow and it was a lot of new products that we're getting involved in.

[00:03:04] Brandy: Yeah, and I would assume that the, that transition to the, the biologics world is quite different from what you have been doing previously.

[00:03:13] Chris: It was significantly different, right? So you're dealing with a lot less spend, but every bit of that spend that you have is critical. So I could spend a million dollars in marketing and I really couldn't tell you what the return on investment was, right?

[00:03:28] Chris: But if I was a, there was a filter that costs 10 cents that wasn't delivered on time or had a problem with it for a biologic manufacturing batch. I could actually be putting someone's life at risk. So that's the difference between those two roles. And it was, it was just so eyeopening and so exciting at the same time.

[00:03:50] Brandy: Yeah. And is that, did that kind of launch your career path into the world of biologics and supply chain procurement? Is that where that all started?

[00:04:00] Chris: Yeah. When I moved back over into the biologic space, that's where I started to really Get bring back together both of my history of supply chain and then meld it with my procurement experience and then looking to become that business person versus just the procurement person or just the supply chain person.

[00:04:21] Chris: But I try to put it all together. From a full business perspective, understanding the outside and the inside and how to bring them together for total value.

[00:04:31] Brandy: Wonderful. And, and, and then from Johnson and Johnson, tell, tell us a little bit about the, the rest of your career journey in this world.

[00:04:39] Chris: Yeah, I actually made, well, this was a little bit outside of the world.

[00:04:42] Chris: So I ended up going into two different companies. One was with, um, Campbell soup company. So I managed. Food, uh, and did a lot of procurement there, but also worked closely with the supply chain aspects of that business. And then I went on to another telecom industry with Comscope. Again, a very big change, but still applying a lot of the same concepts.

[00:05:06] Chris: And then I landed with a company. That was in, uh, clinical trials and they prepared and provided ancillary clinical, um, equipment across the globe. So that's where my innovation and thought processes and strategy really came to a forefront because we had to deliver product on a very short amount of timeframe to our customers.

[00:05:32] Chris: You name the small niche of the, of any country in around the world, we were there. And so that was my role is to make sure that we always were delivering again, back to the patient.

[00:05:43] Brandy: That sounds like a pretty challenging role.

[00:05:45] Chris: It was every day. We had a new challenge. That's for sure.

[00:05:50] Brandy: I bet. And you've had, like I mentioned before, a very extensive career and getting a really, really good job.

[00:05:56] Brandy: Throughout your career journey, you've had two pretty significant events that have happened, one being the 2008 financial crisis, and then most recently, COVID. Can you just talk through, starting with the 2008 financial crisis, just how those two major events really shifted your role and how you looked at things and how, as a company, you had to really take a hold of that.

[00:06:21] Brandy: All the aspects and, and kind of rearrange the way that you're thinking and doing.

[00:06:26] Chris: Yeah, back in 2008, when it really started to have a major impact where I was in my role there at J and J and just overall, the entire world was just going through significant challenges, but it revised and changed our focal point.

[00:06:41] Chris: It started to say, you know, it's not just about margin, not just about sales growth, but you got to look at that bottom line very, very closely. And so we had to do a lot of work with the planning teams. We had to do a lot of work with our, the procurement teams became much more important because everyone's looking, where am I going to save this money?

[00:06:58] Chris: How am I going to operate on a such, on such a smaller budget? And what I try to communicate to my team and to my business partners was that this is the time that procurement needs to shine. Because afterwards, when we come out of this crisis, we still need to be there. So we needed to take full advantage of this moment and show what procurement can do as a business function again, and not just as a tactical, you know, I'm pushing purchase orders across the table.

[00:07:29] Chris: So that was, that was a critical point for Us in the world of procurement, and I think it's an area that really revitalized the whole area of procurement. Took us from what I call purchasing and moved us into strategic sourcing. You know, it really grew the entire function.

[00:07:48] Brandy: Yeah, and more of a risk management perspective.

[00:07:51] Chris: Well, that was the other piece of it, right? Because risk management. We weren't all that worried about. We would try to just continue to grow, spend more, and be able to achieve by delivering, um, just on, you know, Our marketing capabilities. Now you started dealing with understanding your supply base and how important that is to you.

[00:08:13] Chris: And when your suppliers start having a lot of issues, that's what we call supplier risk that they cannot either deliver their product or that their suppliers can't deliver the product to them, which then prevents them from delivering to us. So we went into a lot of detail around how deep, how many levels to go into our supplier relationship management programs.

[00:08:33] Chris: Understand what is the total risk and then we started changing about how quickly can we get this risk? I mean, as we moved on through, um, social media and all that started to build up social media knew about things happening out in the world before we did. Yeah, and so it was very quick where our supply chain leaders would say no longer is.

[00:08:58] Chris: The social media of the world going to know it before we do. You guys need to tell me within four hours, what's happening with all of your products, if there's any risk. So it's just, it's just raised the bar again. Um, and there were a lot of suppliers out there that were coming with us because they saw the opportunity as well to, to build an opportunity for them to develop a new line of business, which we took advantage of.

[00:09:20] Brandy: Yeah, and I I would say You know what what I can kind of gather just from our our conversations chris is that it seems like there was just a big um breakdown of communication, too Yeah, which yeah go you want to dive into that a bit?

[00:09:37] Chris: Sure. Um It was communication not just within our own department, but it's the strong it's the communication links between Your procurement function, it's between the business, it's between what's outside, like your suppliers, as well as what's outside in regards to others in the industry, and then also regulatory and legal and all that that has to all come together.

[00:10:01] Chris: And what I liked about procurement is that we're what we've talked about in the past is that we connect the dots. Where our responsibility is understanding what's on the outside and bringing in because we understand what's on the inside and we bring people together and say, you have to be aware of all these situations that are impacting your business.

[00:10:21] Chris: And that's where we come into play, not just around cost savings, not just around purchase orders, but around enabling the business to perform at a higher level.

[00:10:30] Brandy: And I would imagine in the world of biologics, your supplier relationships and fully understanding how your suppliers are operating. Thank you for your time.

[00:10:38] Chris: Yeah, it's actually critical. I mean, one of the first tasks and we talked about the differences between marketing and biologics before marketing was significantly focused on cost savings.

[00:10:49] Brandy: Yeah,

[00:10:49] Chris: but when you get into biologics, it was 1000 percent focused on ensuring that the product was at. The right place for the patient at the right time.

[00:10:58] Chris: My goal was to have zero stock outs across all of our products. And I can't achieve that without being able to have very, very strong supplier relationships and knowing what was going on with them. And, you know, it was interesting because if you don't, I think we talked about this scenario once too, where we need to be very Open and transparent with what we're buying from our suppliers, because, for example, a supplier just might want to provide us with a much cleaner aluminum in order to put into our media to help ourselves grow, but not tell us about it because they think you're doing the right thing.

[00:11:39] Chris: But meanwhile, that same aluminum used to come with some other elements of iron and magnesium and copper. That the cell lines used to really like enjoying to eat as they were growing and as they were growing on and so we, when we got this clean aluminum, we didn't know it was a new aluminum was the same part number, but we had to go back and figure out through a lot of testing and a lot of analysis.

[00:12:11] Chris: What was missing? And we ended up having to throw back in the iron, the magnesium, the nickel, the copper in order to get the same results. So those are the type of conversations and transparency you need to have with your supply base because any change that they have that they're making on their end is definitely going to impact yourself.

[00:12:30] Chris: We, we experienced that significantly.

[00:12:32] Brandy: Yeah. And from a supplier lens, they're just trying to give you what they think is the best quality.

[00:12:38] Chris: Exactly. Yeah, yeah,

[00:12:40] Brandy: they're doing you a favor and maybe even more expensive for them, right? To remove some of those other additional elements to make a cleaner product.

[00:12:48] Chris: Yes. Yeah. So those are the things that you need to really have, you know, quarterly business reviews and daily discussions with them on what they're thinking. How anything, any decision they make impacts them. And more importantly, where a lot of people don't focus is as the manufacturer, what decisions we make that impact the suppliers, because if they're not successful, then we're not going to be successful.

[00:13:12] Chris: Right. So that's why it's a partnership. It goes both ways.

[00:13:16] Brandy: Yeah. I mean, that's, I think that's a perfect example of just that, that importance of the strength. Communication plays in making sure that the outcome is the best that it possibly can be, what about, you know, thinking of the other major event that happened in your career, COVID, which that affected most people, but especially in this industry.

[00:13:44] Brandy: biologics, I would imagine that things just, it was a completely different world for you.

[00:13:51] Chris: Yeah. All of a sudden the, the supply chain became one of the most critical factors of any person's business, right? How many times did we see all the container ships and, um, the ports that were all getting backed up with materials.

[00:14:08] Chris: And a lot of times we'd be flying Materials back and forth. And we also have, you know, in the world of biologics and vaccines, you're also dealing with a lot of, um, cold storage and cryogenic material that you don't have time to let it sit around. And just. Fall out. So you really need to be very quick and nimble with the way that you manage your time frame and manage your logistics.

[00:14:32] Chris: Um, because the products again, like we said before, um, zero stock outs and making sure the patients are always having their product, um, and their medicines. Is that we, we need to make sure our job is supply chain leaders is to make sure that that product is their, um, planning became very different in time as well, because we talked about this where it used to be, you know, lean manufacturing, right?

[00:14:59] Chris: And storage of warehousing materials, and everything was just in time production while just in time got turned on its head and became just in case. And now everybody starts to store up their materials and how do we manage more storage locations and. Actually bring storage and shipping locations and manufacturing locations into the country that you're manufacturing so that you're not waiting for it to be shipped from China where everything might be coming in cheaper or, uh, from any other location around the world, you got to start centralizing and shrinking your supply chain so that you can be prepared for when another COVID may hit, or even if it's a type of disaster, you know, something with, you know, Weather, which we've seen tremendous changes in weather rates recently.

[00:15:50] Chris: So we need to be prepared for that.

[00:15:54] Brandy: Yeah. And I think that it's easy for people to, when you're, In it, you realize, Oh, we've got to do things a little differently. We're moving from just in time to just in case. And then once that, once that, you know, COVID that we've, we've readjusted, reacclimated to this new normal.

[00:16:14] Brandy: Have you seen people kind of going back to the way that they used to do things?

[00:16:19] Chris: It's a, it's a great point because I, the, the pendulum is coming back again a little bit. Right. So it's like, okay, we got through COVID. We, we were able to manage that. That's no problem. Let's start going back to our just in time methodology again.

[00:16:31] Chris: And, you know, what I've seen and what I think is good and what I've been reading and seeing out there in the industry is that. It's a segmentation type approach, right? There's certain products that you want to have in the just in case mentality. And there's other products that you may have multiple suppliers for multiple locations, the ability to get it from multiple sites.

[00:16:55] Chris: You might even have substitute products that you can place in there, and those can go into the just in time material. So as long as we're able to think smartly about how we manage our inventory, you and C level items. Then it'll make sense. Um, cause not everything should be just in case, you know, and you don't need to store your entire warehouse, but something that you can get as a commodity item.

[00:17:19] Chris: Um, but those critical ones, you need to spend a tent and pay attention to what you, uh, are critical for your operations and make sure that you know how you're going to get them without any interruptions.

[00:17:31] Brandy: Yeah. And what, so, you know, kind of thinking about just how the world, Specifically in, in biomanufacturing, how it is changed and shifted throughout the years.

[00:17:42] Brandy: What are some, what are some of those changes that you've seen firsthand?

[00:17:47] Chris: Yeah, I think what a couple things which are leading into even, um, what I'm doing now with artificial intelligence, but before we got there, we, you know, everything was in large batches and, you know, big 8, 000 gallon, 8, 000 liter tanks.

[00:18:03] Chris: And Making very large batches of a single run all the way through a process and having it in one manufacturing site. Well, there's been a lot of companies out there that are going to what's called single use technology, and they actually produce very small batches, say, in a 30 liter, 50 liter type container and be able to produce it in a way that.

[00:18:31] Chris: You in bags where you can quickly reuse the equipment. So you just take the bag out and throw it away and put them in the bag again. And then there's. The next level of that, where they started to, um, actually put it, there was some innovation that I was working on at one point where they were putting small manufacturing lines for bio manufacturing into the back of a tractor trailer and making that a clean environment and being able to run, bring that to areas of the world that do not have access.

[00:19:04] Chris: So all kinds of innovation coming into play, and now we start talking about artificial intelligence and how can artificial intelligence come in and start looking at the trend lines of a batch as it's being produced and start understanding, okay, last time this happened, we needed to add these products and these materials in order to get it back in line within our operating parameters.

[00:19:27] Chris: And instead of relying on the knowledge of a person that says, Okay, I think now's the time to do it. And this is the amount I need to put in. It's actually equipment generated, generative AI that can come in and say, I see this, I can proactively adjust for it, I can keep us within the parameter before we even ever get out of parameter, and just move on with a much more efficient and timely process and all, and then even increasing the yield of your actual production processes.

[00:19:57] Chris: So, so much happening in that space right now, and there's a lot of people trying to get into it.

[00:20:03] Brandy: Yeah, it's it's really fascinating. I'm assuming to there's a lot of sensor technology that's happening in this in this world.

[00:20:10] Chris: Yeah, with that's, you know, it's talking. I was as I was looking through some of the materials on this as of late the some of the barriers to entry into this type of AI is technology.

[00:20:22] Chris: It is the equipment that you're going to be buying. It is the systems, both hardware and software, right? And it's also one that's probably not being thought about as much as talent. Because it's a different kind of talent base that we have to have in order to make this work. You need to have people that can work with AI and people that can take it and move it to the next level.

[00:20:45] Chris: So all those resources, I'll call them, are critical for the success of that type of business.

[00:20:53] Brandy: Yeah, so kind of give me an example, Chris, of the talent that We may be lacking, like, what did that talent look like previously? And what is that talent going to look like in the future?

[00:21:05] Chris: Yeah. In the past and maybe even currently there's, there's a lot of very, very talented operators, okay.

[00:21:13] Chris: That can produce some very technical batches of material and are able to, um, manage how that. Equipment is used. Manage how the product is used and be able to produce very qualified material and very good results. But moving forward, what I've seen and what I've been reading about, too, is that you need to start improving and implementing about 20 percent of your labor force into very specific AI capabilities.

[00:21:50] Chris: And these, these people are not just. Um, and I was talking, just talking to another colleague about this the other day, they're not just data scientists, right? That are just very good at data and developing the data, but it's people that are knowledgeable about computer systems, knowledgeable about AI, but also have the industry experience.

[00:22:13] Chris: Okay, you need to be able to have both because we just have one of either of those. You're not going to be able to talk to the other. So that's the, the gap in talent that I think we're talking about right now is having those that have experience in both. And I think we need to start building that at the college level and building that right into.

[00:22:32] Chris: Initial roles within the company.

[00:22:35] Brandy: So Chris, when we look at the, this world of biomanufacturing and the technologies that are advancing, what, what are some of the things that you're excited about? What are, what are some of the things that you're seeing?

[00:22:49] Chris: Yeah, from my perspective, especially. And that's biotechnology as well as in pharmaceutical across the board.

[00:22:55] Chris: I do see a very, an impact, uh, where AI is coming in to start managing data overload. So we have, we talked earlier a lot about sensors and a lot about vision sensors and other types of sensors within the processes. All of this is just bringing in so much data that our minds can't handle it. Okay, so there is.

[00:23:16] Chris: new tools and new systems that AI can come in and manage that data overload and pull out the information that's critical on a very rapid basis. So that's one piece that I think is critically important. Um, a second one is just being these AI systems are able to Pull in data from around the world regarding regulatory.

[00:23:36] Chris: So there's a lot of changes going on in regulatory updates, and these regulatory updates and changes impact how you manufacture your product, and it can impact your SOPs. So what's interesting is that AI can go out there and understand what's going on from a regulatory perspective, come back to you and tell you what you need to change in your SOPs so that your manufacturing continues on in the right way.

[00:24:00] Chris: Thank you. So that you're efficient and you don't have any batches that have to be destroyed or, um, you can continue to produce without having to make any changes, um, or pulse in your time frame in order to make your changes. So it's really important to understand how regulatory impacts. Um, your S. O. P. S.

[00:24:18] Chris: And then lastly, just from a manufacturing process, it's it's the real time data analysis. That's important. Um, that's going to identify risks are going to be happening versus just, you know, your gut feeling of like, this doesn't look good. So those are things that I think are important. Lastly, I think again, I talk about talent and people.

[00:24:40] Chris: We're really producing a significant amount of material. You end up having resources that end up having sometimes human fatigue. And you got to get over that, right? So this AI does not express any type of fatigue. They can continue on and moving on. And I actually talked about in the past. I think that's been a goal of many companies is to have that that lights out manufacturing.

[00:25:00] Chris: Well, that's a potential with this, in my opinion, I think we really can have, you know, lock the doors, turn the button on and everything starts to produce and you can feel confident that's going to happen. Um, other systems that I think are important. There's a lot of these vision systems that can manage imperfections in any type of labeling and any type of products themselves.

[00:25:23] Chris: So even in the pharmaceutical, when you're talking about tablets, um, I remember we used to have people pulling tablets out and watching. It's kind of like the, the Lucy show. If you remember pulling the chocolates off the line, dating myself, but, um, now it's AI being able to catch that ahead of time, make the adjustments to the equipment.

[00:25:43] Chris: Okay. And then before anything comes through the line, it's already repaired and, um, fixed in a way that you get in quality product. Um, and then lastly, I think being able to be connected, you know, this is my supply chain coming in again, logistics and warehousing and where do you put your supply, um, network.

[00:26:04] Chris: AI is getting informed into that piece as well. So if there is an, uh, an event going on from a weather perspective in one area of the world, or you need to redesign where you're, um, What storage locations are your manufacturing locations are a I can come in and work with you and your data and information and tell you, here's the best layout for you.

[00:26:27] Chris: And here's why. And the thing about all of these for me is that I don't see a I replacing humans in any of this. Okay. I think there's certain tasks that humans do will be replaced. But what I do think is that it's going to enhance The human interaction enhanced the human decision making. And if anything, I would say people not using AI are those that are going to be displaced.

[00:26:52] Chris: People using AI will continue to thrive. So, so I would end that part.

[00:26:57] Brandy: Yeah. And I, I, I agree with you completely. I think it gives us a lot more room for innovation, perhaps taking people from reviewing new regulations and making sure that they're adhering to. And updating processes. It's thinking about other things that they can be doing and innovating.

[00:27:20] Brandy: I guess. And I, I think that leads me into my next question here is just, what does this all mean for, for companies? What is this, what is this going to allow them to do? What do you see as improving operations, procurement, or is this kind of all come into play for you?

[00:27:39] Chris: Yeah, for me, it's about speed. It's about efficiency and it's about quality.

[00:27:43] Chris: Okay. And there's. So much available for companies to take advantage of, but I think in the past, we haven't done it to the fullest extreme and maybe because it hasn't been as. Productive. So I mean, we've had what we called bots, you know, be able to come in and but bots take things that are just rudimentary and repeatable over and over again.

[00:28:08] Chris: AI now takes things that are not rudimentary and repeatable and just makes sense of them works with humans in order to. Make those adjustments. So I think from a procurement process, we need to start using it much more in how we set up our RFPs, for example, that's another tool that I want to be able to use, um, artificial intelligence for, where I can quickly establish a request for proposal from a company and be able to have all of these requests for proposals, Reviewed, managed, and then kick out a report that says, this is my analysis.

[00:28:46] Chris: And then I, as the human interface would still say, you know what? Yeah, I agree a little bit with that perspective, but as far as this piece, you may have missed a little bit of an interaction with how our business is looking. So. We're going to go slightly different direction. But those are the things I think from a procurement perspective, we're going to be critical.

[00:29:03] Chris: Um, I think legal is going to get really, really involved in this. I think there's concerns around secrecy and privacy, uh, security efforts are going to really need to be a part of this because, you know, you're talking about stuff that's out on the web, right. And, you know, information that's out there, how do we protect that?

[00:29:22] Chris: So that's going to be a piece that's going to be a concern. Um, Integration with our older legacy systems is also going to be difficult and things that the businesses are going to need to want to spend time understanding what's the cost to keep old legacy systems while moving into the future. That, that change is going to be a tough one to acquire and then overall just cost of implementation.

[00:29:51] Chris: Uh, how are we going to implement this? What's the timing? Are we going to implement it? How do we make sure we have it? A dual path scenario, so in case something happens with the A. I. And breaks down, you can still go back to normal production processes. So those are the things that I think businesses need to think about.

[00:30:08] Chris: But I think it's also, um, an opportunity that if you don't start doing this now, you'll be left behind.

[00:30:16] Brandy: Yeah. Now, absolutely. I mean, there's a lot of lot of considerations there just with the way that things are currently being done and how to successfully bring in new technology, acknowledging that you still have a lot.

[00:30:34] Brandy: I mean, assuming in this industry, there's a lot of legacy. Oh, yes, absolutely.

[00:30:41] Chris: Yeah, significant billions of dollars invested that we can't just turn around and say, I'm going to write it off.

[00:30:48] Brandy: We don't need this anymore. Yeah,

[00:30:50] Chris: it will not financially work. Right. But, you know, there's other things that the one other thing that just comes to mind is the.

[00:30:59] Chris: We keep talking about and hearing about personalization of medicine, too, and I think this is going to help make that more of a reality as well. We, instead of making a product that we think can serve everybody, um, based off of one specific formula, I think we're going to start going to be going to be able to identify what are the specific.

[00:31:24] Chris: Aspects of a product with a specific components that tie into a individual's needs for their specific condition and then be able to treat them much more quickly and much more efficiently as well. And I'm just, it's really exciting to see where we can possibly go with this, but it's also going to take some time to get there.

[00:31:45] Brandy: Yeah, that's a really interesting application is that this is the personalized medicine. Is there a company that's doing that right now successfully?

[00:31:55] Chris: I won't say that I know of any companies doing it successfully with AI, but I do know that there's a lot of the main pharma companies, you know, the J& Js, the Lilies, the GSKs, they're, they're focusing on that.

[00:32:07] Chris: And then from a different aspect, you've got a lot of smaller biotech companies that are Focusing on rare diseases as well. So rare diseases are, you know, very personalized, right? Cause there, you don't have these large products out there that can take care of these people and it's. Really exciting to see that there's a lot of companies that are focusing on very specific rare diseases.

[00:32:34] Chris: Now those companies are smaller and they're going to have a harder time investing, but they're also new. So they don't have that legacy, right? So there is an advantage there to say, let's jump in and start using this technology. So it's, it's an interesting play.

[00:32:48] Brandy: Yeah, I was just going to say, I think that maybe the innovation and the technology that has advanced so significantly in this world has allowed for smaller companies to really focus in on some of those rare disease scenarios, where maybe it didn't make sense for some of the older

[00:33:10] Chris: Yeah,

[00:33:11] Brandy: companies who kind of serve a certain purpose and

[00:33:14] Chris: yeah, it wasn't a good business decision for large companies to get into because it takes a lot of effort and a lot of focus and large companies are just not focused and set up that way.

[00:33:24] Brandy: Yeah, you have to be a little bit more agile. I would imagine.

[00:33:27] Chris: Exactly. That's critical. And that's, you know, agile is another, a great term to use for all of this, you know, being agile in today's world is it's going to be, you know, table stakes.

[00:33:41] Brandy: Yeah, I completely agree. Chris, as we, as we round out this conversation here, what advice would you give to.

[00:33:51] Brandy: Leaders in biomanufacturing or maybe folks who are interested in and in that career path What are what's some advice that you would give?

[00:34:01] Chris: Yeah, I think my main point of advice and that i'm going to come back to it for the last time here is really around Focusing on talent your own talent and the talent you're hiring Don't think that you're going to be able just to Flip a switch with the people that you have and the resources that you have and the equipment that you have You know And make this work, you're going to need to have people that know how this operates and those people that know how it's operate, how it operates also need to know the business.

[00:34:29] Chris: So it's a unique. Mindset. It's a unique resource. It's a unique talent base that we're going to have to develop and grow. And then I do like when companies and I've been involved with some companies that go back and we do, um, recruiting events at universities, large universities, and we have, you know, either co op programs or strong, um, internship programs.

[00:34:55] Chris: Relationships with these companies and these, um, universities, that's where it needs to start changing. We need to start having those co ops coming in and say, you know, I don't want you just to come in and get the coffee for the next guy down down the hall. I need you to be focusing on how AI can impact our world.

[00:35:14] Chris: Take, you know, let us. understand the technologies that you're learning in school, and I'll teach you while you're on the job what it looks like to actually be a supply chain professional in the real world. And then when you come back as I hire you, I want you to meld those two together and help us grow.

[00:35:32] Chris: So I'm going to come back to talent always, but that's where we need to focus.

[00:35:37] Brandy: Yeah. And then when you're looking at technology and leaders who are exploring different technologies to implement, you know, especially in the world of AI, I think there's a, there's a lot out there and a lot that's out there is relatively new and to bring something into your ecosystem, do you have any advice for folks exploring different technologies and what, what to implement, what to wait on?

[00:36:05] Chris: No, I think you got to go out there and look at the, the. Experts that are out there. You're going to need to invest in time to get out and look at the companies that are growing that are coming out, um, you know, organically in the world of AI and in supply chain and speak to them.

[00:36:23] Brandy: Chris, thank you so much for coming on to Katalyze a I really appreciate your time and your expertise.

[00:36:30] Chris: Absolutely. Uh, it's been a great ride working with Katalyze AI and I'm looking forward to where the future becomes for, for all of us in this world. So thank you very much.

[00:36:41] Brandy: Wonderful. This series is brought to you by Katalyze AI, the leader in equipping manufacturers with cutting edge AI tools. Katalyze AI redefines manufacturing by digitizing, interlinking, and enriching vital data.

[00:36:57] Brandy: Implementing plug and play AI modules for SWIFT results and developing personalized AI solutions. If you are interested or want to know more, head on over to Katalyzeai. com to find out more information.