Human Performance: 'Blue sky' thinking in human performance and how to get there

In any industry, quality is the building block of everything. People are relied on to deliver the services and products customers expect and need. This is especially so in biopharmaceuticals. But what happens when things go wrong? And what makes them go wrong in the first place?

The reasons are myriad but ‘human error’ is often cited as the cause of problems such as accidents, product recalls and patient safety issues. Unfortunately, a human error is not seen as an opportunity to learn, but as something that drains time, money and resources.

Changing this mindset is crucial to a better understanding of how success and failure happen within an organization, and how to improve its potential to anticipate, monitor, respond and learn – the cornerstones of resilience.

As an industry, biopharmaceuticals is immature when it comes to the integration of human performance into operations. The aim of this paper is to accelerate the industry’s maturity by building a greater understanding of what is desired and explaining how to get there. Human performance is believed by many companies in our industry to be a focus on human error reduction, where work outcomes will improve by adding more requirements and coercing people to try harder to be infallible. This archaic approach is not sustainable today and is not human performance.

This paper is specific to our industry. Companies are not likely to have success by copying a program from another industry, such as nuclear. We have provided guidance that has worked within our industry and the unique regulatory space we operate within. If you think you’re doing human performance and it doesn’t look, feel and sound as we have described in this paper, then you are not there yet.

‘Blue-sky’ human performance

The paper summarizes the team’s shared experience over the last few years and discusses how the performance of teams and whole operations can be improved through investigations and learning, proactive learning and monitoring performance.

Its key points can be summarized as:

  • Error is normal – even the best people make mistakes
  • Blame fixes nothing
  • Learning and improving are vital – learning is deliberate
  • Context influences behavior – systems drive outcomes
  • How you respond to failure matters, how leaders act and respond counts.

Blue-sky vision of human performance takes time and patience to implement properly and must be viewed as a fundamental change to how an entire organization operates. It requires a transformation of the organization’s systems and thinking over a period of several years. The paper provides proven guidance and a case study of why one company’s standard approaches to root cause analysis were ineffective at reducing repeat events – both minor events but also significant ones that caused a loss of product and production time, such as contaminations. It discusses how the culture of the company changed from one of ‘it only happened once’ with weak corrective and preventive actions, to one where ‘human errors’ were only considered symptoms of wider system-level problems in the organization.

The business environment is changing and yet mental models created years ago of what good problem-solving looks like, and how they drive overall performance are still used. Human performance is the way to make a shift towards systems thinking.  Without making this change, organizations may fail to keep up with the increasing complexity of the environments in which they work, and the environments they create.

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Cell & Gene Therapy

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Drug Substance

Accelerating improvement, exploiting opportunities offered by innovation, and identifying best practice approaches across all aspects of the manufacturing process – these are the essential objectives

Data and digital capabilities are at the core of many of these industry challenges. Work in BioPhorum Drug Substance is informed by BioPhorum Technology Strategy, which has summarized our industry’s market drivers and trends. Capacity, flexibility, sustainability and pace all feature as requirements to succeed in a rapidly changing environment.

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Quality and demonstrating compliance are two priorities of BioPhorum Fill Finish. Representatives of the world’s top sterile filling operations come together to develop solutions to some of the most intractable technical and regulatory challenges. To address these challenges in drug product aseptic filling (‘fill’) and secondary packaging (‘finish’) operations, our community of industry experts is working relentlessly to continually improve the pharmaceutical quality system (PQS). Together they continue to strive towards developing and implementing safe, predictable, lean, and agile processes in drug product operations. Find out more about the Phorum output here. 

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IT and digital advances are crucial in responding to the pharmaceutical industry’s challenges around speed, cost, quality, flexibility, and sustainability. Unlocking and realizing the value in the industry’s IT opportunities is the core mission of the IT Phorum. 

The digital manufacturing facility of the future needs to consider technology advances alongside organizational perspectives while maintaining foundational security requirements. All elements must be considered in the long term to deliver systemic change toward the digital factory vision. Our members collaborate in a format that stimulates and supports industry innovation and implementation. 

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BioPhorum Regulatory CMC is affording professionals the opportunity to shape their own collaboration program focused on challenges and opportunities across strategy, science, operations, submissions and compliance. Following a discovery program of work with Heads of Regulatory CMC, in which we identified some key topics of collaboration, we are giving you the opportunity to participate and help us to shape the final collaboration program. This will focus on, filing and review, interactions with Health Authorities, and harmonization. Our mission is not just to discuss, but to deliver applicable outputs and publications that will have an impact – learn more about how you can get involved.

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Supply Partner

BioPhorum SP members want the inbound supply chain for the biomanufacturing industry to be recognized as one of the best-understood and managed global supply chains. They intend to be not only a trusted advisory group but also the engine that drives change for the industry. Working together, we aim to achieve supply chain transformation that provides:

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There’s an extensive list of Phorum successes and tangible benefits that have been delivered to define industry best practise.

Sustainability

The BioPhorum Sustainability program is jointly designed, governed, and delivered by a membership drawn from licence holders, contract manufacturers, major suppliers and niche suppliers. This dynamic partnership means that we can quickly focus on the areas that have the greatest industry impact, and we can leverage learning from each other and other sectors – the chemical industry and the built environment for example.

BioPhorum’s unique ability to build a strong coalition for change for an entire industry is now being applied to the greatest challenge of our generation. Driven by evident industry needs, Phorum members are working to develop agreed industry benchmarks, establish the ROI of sustainability investments and to increase the efficacy of implementation of members’ sustainability strategies.

Technology Strategy

With a mission to define strategies to accelerate technology transformation and support the adoption of innovative technologies, BioPhorum Technology Strategy evolved from BioPhorum Technology Roadmapping, strives to realize the technology roadmap vision 2.0.

This is being achieved through a multi-stakeholder team of member companies with collective capability and influence who are committed to driving forth industry goals associated with: Speed to market, Quality, Value, Agility and On-Demand Supply and Sustainability.

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The medical technology (MedTech) industry is a critical and complex sector. As highlighted during the Covid-19 pandemic, the MedTech industry provides a wide array of products and technologies that are vital to the safe and effective provision of care to many. Also, as seen over recent years, there is often the requirement for flexibility in supply, rapid development, and the introduction of new products to keep pace with global public health demands.

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AWC involves treating chronic or complex wounds using products that are not as easily obtained over the counter. AWC can be divided into three main categories: wound healing, infection prevention, and restoration.

Drug Delivery

Drug delivery products are therapeutic and diagnostic products combining drugs, devices, and/or biological products, which enable safer and more efficient treatment due to careful and precise drug targeting, local administration, and tailored treatment.

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MediPhorum by BioPhorum has been launched to bring together senior business leaders and subject matter experts across multiple MedTech... read more

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