Dr. Stephan Rosenberger, Head Digital Transformation Group Operations at Lonza, elaborates on Lonza’s virtual reality training concept.

There is an interesting journey in front of us and I’m looking forward to develop innovative ways to unlock the potential of our employees.

We at Lonza are building this VR training concept in response to a challenge we anticipate over the coming years as we grow our business. A lot of new employees will join Lonza and we need to train the newcomers in all the critical operations, like clean room behavior or working in a bio safety cabinet.
VR training is a strong and innovative way to deliver on-boarding training, specifically useful in these pandemic times.

And where do you see the key benefits of the virtual reality training in comparison to these standard trainings, in person trainings?

Training anytime and anywhere which allows us to train people without interrupting commercial production for training purposes.

Research data also show that VR training is more effective with supporting the flawless execution required in a pharma GMP production. They can collaboratively operate critical equipment even if they are sitting in different production sites, in different countries or continents.

I wonder what is coming next from the digital transformation team.

Imagine the combination of AI with VR, artificial intelligence like voice recognition in the virtual world and other technology, like haptics. It’s currently on our road map that people can feel during the execution of their work what they really touch. Or think about meeting with your customers in a virtual environment, showing them products or critical processes.

That will be one of the next steps we are looking into.