Cytiva Associate Stories - Part 3

Hello!

Welcome back to our associate stories blog!

Our third blog post features three unique associate stories.

In this quarter’s article, we will spotlight the stories of Linnea Viktorsson, Jaisimha Seshadri, and Jonny Näsman.

The first story focuses on Linnea Viktorsson as she shares what it takes to succeed during a crisis.

Then, Jaisimha Seshadri explains why he made a huge career move while at Cytiva when he relocated from India to Singapore.

Finally, read Staff Development Engineer, Jonny Näsman’s story as he reveals how he and his team have made sustainable improvements to dozens of production processes. 

Trust and Courage: The Secrets to Succeeding During a Crisis

Published on April 6, 2022– by Linnea Viktorsson.

A few months after I became a crisis management coordinator at Cytiva, the pandemic hit and my name was everywhere. Together with the site management team, I was making sure our site in Uppsala continued to function and that employees stayed healthy. I suddenly found myself in meetings with the highest management, developing and changing plans, and answering questions from people all around the world. Though it was trial by fire, I learned that when you are really trusted and you have freedom, it’s fun to deliver.

When I decided to make the career shift from logistics to security, I knew I was taking on a really important job. It suddenly became even more important because of COVID-19—our biggest clients were companies relying on our products in order to respond to the pandemic. Even though I had no previous experience in security, Daniel Gillheim, the new Manager of Facility Management, had seen that I was ready for this challenge. Daniel valued the work I had been doing in distribution and logistics and said that while anyone can learn security exercises, knowing the company and the processes comes from experience, and I had that.

I’ve learned so much about the importance of clear and consistent communication in this position. Part of this was making sure people had one point of contact they trusted—me. It wasn’t that I had all the answers, but I would gather the right people and information to communicate a clear answer. We created guidance on everything from working from home to mask-wearing in the workplace. Sometimes there were just two days between protocol adjustments because things were happening so fast. We held weekly forums to answer associates’ questions and revised the guidance to reflect what people wanted to know. As it turns out, our approach seems to have worked. Uppsala, as a site, got really high scores on pandemic-related questions in a global survey, showing that employees felt secure in how we handled the pandemic.

Being part of the site management team deciding these important policies was a bit intimidating at first, but I wanted to be there. I was sitting in meetings with our leadership team and I never felt like an outsider. I was included from the beginning, and it felt easy. But I think it really came down to courage. I’ve always had the support of my colleagues and of my boss, and I know this helped me find the courage I needed to do the job.

Security includes a lot more than COVID-19. It’s about doing everything you can to eliminate risk. But because it’s not always possible to totally avoid risk, you try to minimize damages and learn from what has happened to do better next time.

Now I want to start looking back through all of the data we have from the past two years. We have the opportunity to assess our pandemic response—both to learn how we can do better in the future and to share our experience throughout the company.

Taking the next step: Expanding to new roles at Cytiva

Published on June 6, 2022 – by Jaisimha Seshadri  

In one’s career, we cannot simply switch off and say, “Oh, I want to be a general manager in 10 years.” You need to work towards it. I worked for six years in my systems automation role, and while it was exciting, I started to feel that I wanted to venture into something new.

Even though I was uncertain of where I was headed, I knew I didn’t want to leave Cytiva. I love working in a place where I get to put new solutions to the test and play with products every now and then. For example, when I was on the R&D team in Bangalore, we had something wonderful called ‘Geek Week’ - an entire week dedicated to trying out innovation. We would come up with completely new solutions on our own and the business would then fund the new ideas. There’s flexibility and an openness to trying new things at Cytiva, so I started to explore what opportunities I could have within the company.

Since I had a good grip of technical knowledge from the R&D role, I wanted to test out my skillset in a customer-facing role—it was an area I wanted to learn more about. I was interested in Singapore, in part, because it’s a place where there is a demand for my digital automation skills and also my experience in biotech, which is more niche. In July 2020, this all led to my move from the R&D team in Bangalore to the company’s Digital Service team in Singapore.

Moving to a new country with my wife and daughter at the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak was a Herculean task. It was made possible by the support of my managers and HR who took care of us throughout the challenges—including when I tested positive for asymptomatic COVID-19 during relocation. Everyone was checking on our health and wellbeing. On a funnier note, because of this, I felt I became well known at the Singapore office before I even started the role. 😊

As a technical person taking on a completely new domain-service role, with some sales work required, was challenging to begin with—but making this big change has been worth it. In my experience, recognition and promotions at Cytiva are unbiased and unparalleled, but I also had the impression that career growth is even faster if you have direct impact on the business in customer-facing roles. So far, I’ve found this to be true. After just one and a half years, I’ve been promoted from Digital Field Service Engineer to Digital Service Leader. My role was also extended beyond Southeast Asia to the entire Service APAC region.

While I’m now working in digital solutions sales, my technical experience is my bread and butter, and I’m still keen to get my hands dirty trying out new solutions. I’m also fixing automation and digital issues that arise with customers, which helps reduce manufacturing downtime for life-saving drugs. In my new role, I am promoting digital solutions as a key differentiator for the service business, and recently, I’ve been trying something new by creating digital ambassadors in each country. This is an area where I can learn a lot from teams all over the world. It’s also exciting to understand the digital problem statements from customers and to then suggest the best solutions. I’m also working to build my communication and leadership skills so I’m more effective at both. For example, I want to learn how to convey messages in fewer words to save time—using phrases, not sentences or paragraphs. I sometimes feel like a “jack of all trades, master of none.” There is a wide spectrum of digital solutions that I can’t implement by myself, but I’m getting it done with the right resources. It’s a good feeling when we get to solve customer pain points. I am confident that someday I will be where I want to be, and I know that I am actively working to get there.

A Culture of Innovation: Accelerating ideas at Cytiva

Published on July 11, 2022 – by Jonny Näsman 

After 20 years of working in chromatography, I’m still exploring new ideas. And sometimes a casual curiosity leads to a major innovation—especially when innovation is constantly encouraged.

A few summers ago, in 2019, I was supervising a summer associate in our Custom Designed Media (CDM) division here in Uppsala. The CDM team uses various tools and chemical techniques to craft tailor-made solutions for customers when the standard chromatography resins don’t work for them. And then when we’re done, we need to wash away residual chemicals. That requires a lot of water, buffers and solvent—which means that our plant basically is a very big washing machine. And everyone knows that washing several times with less water is more efficient than a few times with a lot of water.

I’d been wondering for some time whether we needed to use so much water, and when the summer associate needed a project to work on, I decided it was time to experiment. Initial tests showed that washing with less water didn’t affect the functionality of the final product, and so some of my colleagues encouraged me to submit my idea to Cytiva’s Innovation Accelerator challenge, which had asked for ideas focused on sustainability initiatives.

I didn’t know much about the program—I thought maybe I’d get feedback on whether to continue testing or not. But then my idea was one of the final six to be selected. For the next several weeks, I took part in a very intense but very fun ‘bootcamp’ process: We developed more efficient chemical and water washing processes in our resin production. We also changed the mindset for future development work to support the sustainability of Cytiva operations. I had to build a cross-functional team with people from R&D, Marketing and Production. There was even an internal broadcast, where we had to pitch the idea to members of the Cytiva leadership team and the head of the sustainability program to get funding.

Our changes didn’t affect the product quality, which of course is very important for customers who use our products in regulated pharmaceutical production. We ended up saving more than just water. When we reduced the amount of liquid, we also could reduce chemicals like acetic acid and ethanol in our synthesis methods. And when we use fewer liquids in our equipment, the capacity increases and improves the supply of important materials. This meant we could delay capacity investment in product equipment and produce more of the popular products with existing equipment. It also relieves the wastewater plant that handles our waste streams. It’s really a win-win situation—what's good for the planet and our customers is also good for the business. Sustainability is our daily routine as it is always at the core of what we do. All the time. Every day.

So far, we’ve been able to make related changes in more than a dozen existing processes, which has saved over 230 tons of chemicals, over 250 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent and 2000 cubic meters of water in just about 10 months.

Continuous improvement has always been important to me, and innovation is part of the culture here—from the Danaher Business System and to the way upper management supports experimentation. We make mistakes all the time, but we learn from them, and everyone understands that’s part of the process. The emphasis on innovation is one reason I’m still excited about my job after two decades.

I’ve recently moved into a new role as Staff Development Engineer, where I have the opportunity to coach new associates. They come with a fresh mindset, and they might have ideas we haven’t thought of. I think it’s so important to listen to new and maybe less-experienced people, because they have a different set of eyes on the problem. That’s really the best way of doing innovation—together.

 Impressive? Exciting? Inspirational? We think so, too.

If this sounds like a place you can see yourself working at, take a look at our career website and come join a team full of passionate people creating innovative solutions for now and the future of the life sciences.

Thank you for reading our third quarterly blog post.