Global Upskilling  

Innopharma’s successful home-based training model is going global.

People come from all over the world to work in the Irish pharmaceutical sector, a renowned industrial hub. Some come to learn skills to advance their careers here, or at home, through Innopharma Education. Now, the firm takes this home-based training model overseas – first to South Africa.

The Challenge

Skills are changing people’s lives and powering them to a better, more rewarding career. Whether it is Ireland, continental Europe or Africa, there is a pressing need for people with digital and coding skills that are required to drive both the green transition and digital transformation.

This is a time of great flux across the pharmaceutical and medical device industry, as the long-talked-about transformation to digital technology becomes a more urgent and pressing need. The opportunity for more efficient, safer, and profitable – mean that no company, no matter how big or successful, can afford to postpone making transformative changes.

The momentum behind digitization, even in the traditional conservative pharmaceutical sector, is building. The pressure is coming from regulators who want to have far greater, real-time, monitoring of manufacturing processes, and from national European governments and from the EU.

Governments, including Ireland, have drawn up plans about how to move as quickly and seamlessly towards Industry 5.0, where machines and robots help humans to work better and faster through advanced new technologies like the Internet of Things, or mining of big data sets. There are also now legally binding national plans to move to a sustainable industry. 

This can’t happen, without sufficient numbers of people with the right skills. People trained in high-technology process manufacturing, and ‘just-in-time’ production, for example. People with the skills to ensure a complex supply-chain remains resilient even when facing threats like a pandemic.

These skills are critical for Europe to remain globally competitive. They are also the kind of skills that developing countries can harness to finally achieve a level playing field with the most advanced technological nations. This is the context in which a number of EU-Africa projects in the field of skills training, have received significant funding in the past few years.

Governments, including Ireland, have drawn up plans about how to move as quickly and seamlessly towards Industry 5.0, where machines and robots help humans to work better and faster through advanced new technologies like the Internet of Things, or mining of big data sets. There are also now legally binding national plans to move to a sustainable industry. 

This can’t happen, without sufficient numbers of people with the right skills. People trained in high-technology process manufacturing, and ‘just-in-time’ production, for example. People with the skills to ensure a complex supply-chain remains resilient even when facing threats like a pandemic.

These skills are critical for Europe to remain globally competitive. They are also the kind of skills that developing countries can harness to finally achieve a level playing field with the most advanced technological nations. This is the context in which a number of EU-Africa projects in the field of skills training, have received significant funding in the past few years.

What we do 

For almost 10 years, international students have received training to enable them to be a part of these changes through Innopharma Education – via Griffith College Dublin. They then either brought those skills back home to help the growth of pharma in their country of origin or used them as a springboard for a career in Ireland – adding more value to the sector here.

This approach has worked very well for all concerned. The pharma and medical device industry here in Ireland, gets more of people with the high technology skills they need, students benefit by advancing their careers, and other countries benefit when their upskilled workers return home.

“For many years now, international students have been coming to us to get the skills they need to further their careers,” said Innopharma Education Chief Executive Officer, Ian Jones. “This has proven very successful with hundreds of our graduates now placed in important roles in pharma. We have built up strongly connected alumni of graduates across the industry.”

The time is right, said Jones, for this strategy to be turned ‘inside out’ and to take an approach that has worked well in Ireland out into the world. “Instead of students coming to us, we are, for the first time going to go to them,” said Jones. “Our first overseas project is in Cape Town, which we have chosen because it’s the hub of the South African pharma industry.”

Share:

In Cape Town, between 50 and 100 graduates in science and engineering, have signed up to receive the digital skills they need from InnoGlobal, along with a local partner, to advance their careers. It’s a new venture, but one that’s in keeping with what Innopharma has always done.

“This is our first outreach project, but we have been doing ‘in reach’’ projects for years,” said Innopharma Director Seán Costello. “We have had students from India, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria South Africa over the years,” said Costello. “These countries are at different stages of development with their pharmaceutical and device manufacturing sectors – and the skills and needs that they have currently, reflect those differences,” he said.

“So, yes, while doing outreach to Africa is new for us, it is also a natural evolution of what has been a global business for us,” said Costello. “In Ireland, over the last 20 years, we have seen a big influx of people coming to work in high-tech industries, so it stands to reach they’d be looking to us for upskilling and training – now we are just doing this in reverse.”

The students taking part in the first project in Cape Town are from 10 different African countries. The plan is that, ultimately, similar training projects – tailored to suit local needs – will be rolled out across Africa.

Read more about our Digital Transformation Project in Cape Town here.

Share: