Process Excellence Through Automation at BioMarin Pharmaceutical

In September 2020, APQC spoke with Dr. Veera Ramanathan (director for process lead, information management at BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc.) about his organization’s robotic process automation (RPA) journey. Biomarin Pharmaceutical Inc. develops and provides treatments for rare diseases, but Ramanathan said that low-value-added tasks often take scientists away from important research and development work. The automation team at BioMarin has been able to save thousands of labor hours, achieve higher customer satisfaction, and ultimately empower the organization to serve its patients better through RPA projects across the enterprise. Ramanathan spoke with APQC about the team behind automation projects, how the organization selects processes for automation, the role PPM plays in helping the business achieve automation success, and more.