Driving performance, growth and innovation in life sciences automation

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Immersed in the everyday: Most of us have felt the impact of what ATS do (ATS Automation)

ATS Automation is a Business Reporter client.

Chances are that you or someone in your household has felt the impact of what we do at ATS Life Sciences.

Think of your morning routine: brushing your teeth, shaving, putting in contact lenses, taking your medications (which you may have ordered online), testing your blood glucose, self-administering an injection or inhaler dose. Or consider a clinical setting where you provide a sample for a diagnostic test (including for your pet): all of the tubes, medical tools, syringes, vials, IV bags and other things you see, plus the equipment in the lab that you don’t see, were produced by a life sciences manufacturer.

When an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) in the life sciences space wants to get their pharmaceutical, medical device or diagnostic to market, it works with life sciences manufacturers. Typically, the OEM will have to wear the hat of an integrator and source skilled and highly regulated services from four or five different companies; acting as its own general contractor. In a complex project there can be a lot of finger-pointing between vendors, and that’s not what a customer wants when they’re trying to get a product to market.

Part of your routine: as an original equipment manufacturer, ATS are at the heart of many at-home medical processes (Getty Images)

Delivery is key in this market. Often our customers at ATS come to us after receiving regulatory approval, and have to get their product into the market fast. The one thing they don’t want to compromise on is quality.

When a customer approaches ATS they want to know that we can deliver. And they choose us because of our reputation for unparalleled automation and scalability, that we have enhanced with end-to-end manufacturing capabilities. Couple that with a true customer-centric approach based on collaborative innovation and the global impact and growth ATS can point to, and we have a winning formula.

As part of our acquisition strategy ATS has brought together a group of skilled providers under a single banner to offer a one-stop-shop for the customer. We have vertical integration, we provide a single project manager, and we have a single point of accountability. When time to market is key for customers, that in-house integration of complex processes adds a great deal of value.

The partnerships within the ATS Life Sciences Group are such that the customer can stay with an ATS company from beginning to end, whether they need help on the drug discovery side, in clinical trials, or on high-speed manufacturing and packaging.

ATS is an experienced integrator and we can help them do all of that.

Contact lens wearer? Your morning routine is likely to have been facilitated by ATS equipment (Shutterstock)

Our vision is to double the Life Sciences Group organically in the next four years, and we are confident in our ability to achieve it. Our strategy is to strengthen our core and expand into adjacent markets, expanding our portfolio of products that support our customers throughout the drug development lifecycle, from basic research and development to commercial production.

While our focus is life sciences and our engineers develop marvels of machinery, we’re also businesspeople and we see holistic problem-solving as a skill we bring to the table too. We recognise and address issues of reshoring, labour and skills shortages, supply chain management and matters of capital expenditures with increased efficiency and reduced total cost of ownership, while still operating more sustainably with lower power usage and emissions.

Digitalisation and AI/machine learning can be a further burden on a skilled labour shortage, or it can be approached as something that adds real value. Modern software tools are data-hungry, and the bottlenecks that enable them are now found across machine architectures. Our thought processes in data accessibility and availably need to change with a focus on how to scale and make all equipment data available on demand with no additional programming.

Innovation can strike fear into the hearts of some, especially in highly regulated industries, because change introduces risk. That valid concern needs to be balanced against the potential upside of building a better mousetrap. ATS has three dedicated Innovation Centres (in Canada and Germany) where we throw away the rulebook and allow creative minds to explore possibilities. With multiple patents pending, this is an investment that continues to pay dividends and is a point of differentiation we proudly point to.

Working with a global leader in life sciences automation has its benefits, and end-to-end partnership on delivering a shared goal is just one. Everyone who works here helps to deliver solutions that positively impact billions of people worldwide.

Think about us the next time you are brushing your teeth, or wearing your contact lenses, or talking to your family member in cancer remission. Our equipment is used to make pharmaceuticals, medical devices and diagnostics but our drive for innovation, global presence and our work with the world’s leading life sciences companies, our customer-centric business processes, and our passion for delivering top-quality products on time are what change lives around the world.

Our constant push to grow into adjacent markets through organic means and acquisitions keep us as a leader in our spaces.

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If you see a connection with our capabilities and view of the world, please contact us. We are here to work with you and change lives everywhere for the better.

Learn more about the members of the ATS Life Sciences group of companies

By Prakash ‘Cash’ Mahesh, Group Executive, ATS Life Sciences

(ATS Automation)

Cash Mahesh (cmahesh@atsautomation.com) is responsible for the overall leadership of the ATS life sciences business. He maintains a constant focus on building high-performance teams and elevating operational efficiencies.