-: My name is Maria Khouzam.
I work for Merck.
I'm a chemical engineer.
I work in the Global Engineering Solutions Department.
We mainly focus on making improvements
on existing facilities and new production facilities
for vaccines and biologics.
We use Lean Six Sigma methodologies to
make the processes more efficient and to end,
for both the existing and new facilities.
We interact with a lot of different groups
from supply chains to operations to research,
to really bring forward a design that is fitting for both
the business need but also for the patient
and the customer at the end of the day.
For existing production, I get basically
called in
when something is either not going correctly,
we need to expand
capacity,
or we need to improve certain things.
So I get called in
for these pieces.
We do some analyses.
We make sure that we're gathering all the data that we need.
And once that happens,
we go back to our internal customers, if you will,
and deliver the recommendations that we have.
The other scenario is working on the new facilities.
And that's a little bit more challenging
because as opposed to existing
where you have data to rely on,
for the new facilities you actually
don't have a lot of data.
You're creating the data as you go.
And taking in assumptions, right?
So we have to make sure that we're making assumptions
that are realistic and communicating those.
And for that, we get involved in the very early phases
of the project when the inception of the idea
we need a new facility for X product,
up until maybe the early phases of
the design phases.
So we make some recommendations in the beginning,
and then after that, design kicks off
and they'll take it from there.