Judy Eycleshymer has been with MilliporeSigma for over 40 years
What technology advancements over the past 20+ years has had the greatest impact on your work at MilliporeSigma?
In my 40 years at the company, a majority of my efforts have focused on providing technical support and training customers as well as our customer support teams …on our products, technologies, regulations, and applications. In the early years, the tools that we had were extremely limited, such as slide projectors or overhead transparencies and we were required to carry enormous amounts of product samples and literature with us when visiting customers. Now in the digital age, we have the luxury of accessing very high quality and extremely customized product or application videos, e-literature, quality documentation, support data, or sales histories. We even have access to virtual reality laboratory simulators and digital training modules, all on our iPads at the touch of a button. It’s really quite amazing to reflect on how technology has enabled us to be so much more efficient in our day to day activities.
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What hasn’t changed over your 40-year career?
We have always had a very consultative and collaborative relationship with our customers, which I believe has always been mutually beneficial - allowing us to learn more about their applications and testing needs ultimately helping us to deliver more valued solutions.
As well, our customers have always had a thirst for new product & technologies that help reduce risk, improve regulatory compliance and enable operational efficiency. In my time at the company, I have seen quite a few generations of our core product offering be adapted based on the voice of our customers. We really take pride in knowing that hundreds of amazing customer collaborations have helped to craft each new product and service launch.
What other interesting Industry trends have you seen unfold over the years?
Some of the biggest changes have come with the introduction of the use of Isolators, RABs, and cleanroom environment technology. The advances in controlled environments for sterility testing and aseptic drug manufacturing have contributed to less microbial contamination and overall safer drugs for the industry.
The introduction and acceptance of Rapid Microbiology methods has probably been the second biggest change for microbial testing methods. Regulatory acceptance has increased dramatically over the past 10 – 15 years. It will be exciting to see these technologies adopted more routinely for standard product testing.
I believe the 3rd largest change has been in prepared media in liquid, solid agar, bagged and custom formulations. Everyone had a media kitchen back in the day to prepare all the necessary media, rinse solutions and buffers for manufacturing and quality control purposes. Now the industry depends on ready to use, room temperature stable and shelf life of 9 months to 2 years depending on configurations. This adoption allows microbiologists and researchers to focus on assay results and method improvements.
What about challenges?
Our biggest challenge is what makes all of our jobs so exciting. Trying to anticipate and keep up with the next wave of sample matrices, container closure systems, drug delivery systems, isolator technologies, as well as regulatory changes. The expansion from traditional parenteral drugs to MABS and small molecules to personalized autologous cell therapies has resulted in a wide variety of evolving customer needs. The challenge has always been to ensure that our solutions keep pace with their ever-changing needs.
What about specific industry or company innovations have you witnessed or have been involved in directly?
I’ve witnessed the introduction and evolution of Membrane filtration for both sterile filtration and QC related Microbial recovery applications. For QC Microbiologists, membrane filtration enabled larger sample sizes to be tested, the ability to rinse growth inhibitors away from test samples, and made seeing colony morphologies easier in many cases, compared to pour plate or spread plate methods.
Two specific membrane-based developments stand out in my mind. The first, the advancement of low-binding PVDF membranes (from cellulosic) arose as a result of the increasing frequency of inhibitory products and preservatives within the industry.
The second would be the development of membrane-plastic bonding technologies to enable reliable single use filtration devices for both sterility and bioburden testing applications eliminating the need to autoclave manifold assemblies or handle membranes.
I am also extremely proud to have played a major role in establishing many of our customer and employee training programs which are still in use to this day such as our on-site Lunch and Learn seminars. They certainly continue to evolve each year and customers appreciate the expertise and knowledge we bring to them.
Author Biography
Judy (Judith) Eycleshymer has spent her entire career at Millipore, now MilliporeSigma (Merck KgAa). She started in manufacturing in 1976 as a machine operator making IV filtration units with the brand name of IVEX. Her journey took her through several different roles in manufacturing, quality control, technical service, field marketing, Marketing Education manager, Global Training manager, Application Specialist (sales) and for past 8 years as Sr. Sales Director in the BioMonitoring group focused solely on microbiology product offering.
She has a BS Business Management degree from Lesley Univ. in Boston, MA, Judy has been an active member of PDA for ~25+ years, mostly in the Delaware Valley Chapter as a board member and treasurer. She participated as trainer for Sterility Testing for the Aseptic Processing course via PDA Training center, and as Market Education manager and Global Training she co-developed several training tools that are still being utilized today known as the Lunch & Learn series.