You can blame whatever department and whoever you want to. At the end of the day those folks are gone and we're still the same shit hole we were when they were here.

Looks like CH BR CW AB JM SH all got the better end of the deal....while the rest of us get ready to collect unemployment. Thank you Lesley....you ass!!

My bet is the site is closed before the end of the year, sooner if it fails a 3rd inspection.

QA at this site is horrid!!! Not one of them knows a damn thing about compliance other than initial and dating cross-outs. How about they work on getting people that know about compliance and what the FDA expects instead of just bringing in other company rejects. All the people that gave a damn are gone and now we're left with this mess. I thought the NEO was to be the saving grace? Looks apparent LONZA isn't out to help us in Hopkinton, they're out to bury the remaining souls.

you have to blame the hole organization top to bottom. And indeed what a "hole" it is

you have to blame the hole organization top to bottom. But there is maybe 2 or 3 quality operators at this site so I can't see how it functions. the support groups are just as bad. SH is easily one of the worst and laziest engineering heads in the history of the field it is as sad a place I have ever seen right now. The SLT is as pathetic as it comes and have given up hope.

My money is that HOpkinton fails its third FDA inspection in as many tries. Than who do you blame? Vegas has to take odds on this.

Hahahaha!!!! I love this back and forth between you retards...one is a high ranking Lonza official with the keen insight to what the industry is all about (probably your typical mfg douche) and the other is a dont blame me it wasn't my fault (probably QC lab rat) keep it going.....it's entertaining to read what little either of you know. Hahahahaha!! But than again the FDA will be sure to set the record straight. Lol as the lights dim on Hopkinton.

Your Mothers Trash I hauled here away pretty easy. Ever work for a real Company Dickhead?

Merck is still a client in portsmouth< many talks of working again in 7 and 8. Never been in a management meeting huh? sound like your mother should've swallowed you instead, angry person who knows shit about the Field. So Pathetic, must Kill you to know I am higher up the ladder than you, you pathetic piece of crap.

You're a complete shithead....Merck is long gone and has been... You dont know what ÿoure talking about moron. Go somewhere and die. I hear suite 7&8 aren't being used. Maybe you can go hang yourself with the compliance rope that the manufacturing group has created with its constant deviations. Dumb asses with a heartbeat that couldn't get hired hauling trash away.

someone works for QC, you and your department blow. worked in the fieldfor 20 years never seen such a pathetic group. the manufacturing there now does suck, but a great team was assembled for 7 and 8 and they let everyone walk. BMS still is a customer, the drug we manufactured didnt do well in trials and merck is still a customer do you have any idea what your talking about? the product we made in 7 and 8 was conjugate and didn't work quite as well with all there other products. so they don't need anymore. plus the water in 7 & 8 is dirty. I guess thats manufacturings fault. There are problems everywhere but if you cant keep track of samples you are killing a company from within. Not sure if qa reviews QC calcs or not but if they do they are just as much to blame. If you look at any records there you know QA is a joke.

You're all.oblivious if you believe the sites failure was due to any one departments shortcomings. Doesn't QA review any calculations prior to approving them for use anyway? The site failed because of collective failures from ALL departments. There isn't a department here that can say they function appropriately and if they say they do they are either lieing or ignorant.

Manufacturing people at the site are the dregs.... you have a heartbeat? Great! Welcome to manufacturing at Lonza.

Its obvious you don't know what you're talking about..... manufacturing does nothing at that site...it has lost more batches than its made from stupid mistakes by the operators ....and if BMS and Merck were so good why are they no longer our customers?

Ipsen did not come to the site until 2008 after Lonza took over. It was being commercially produced somewhere else prior to 2008.

Manufacturing can only go as far as their support, qa and qc there dropped the ball a hundred times. Ipsen had issues before the place was lonza. Suite"s 7 and 8 pumped out succesful bms centorcor and plenty of merck Batch's until the validation and engineering issues shut down the joint. it also helps when manufa cturing has to run through every sample that was taken and redo the calcs on them all the way back to 2007.(QC's JOB) thats when lonza took over, but the bioburden calc was done wrong all the way the way back to 2000. who is the only person invoved in that the whole time. HMMM BR, lord knows, I guess GMPs dont require you to verify your calc. It's truely one of the most pathetic things i have ever heard of in the industry? scares me beyond belief.

I'm not saying that those departments didn't have their issues but tell me of a department there that didn't have issues? Manufacturing can't make product and when they do there are tons of deviations associated with it, QA has no responsibility to anything and as a result the place received not only a warning letter but also a failed GMP inspection. But lets say your right about QC and Engineering being the major prooblem...with the problem children gone the place should be running like a top. Soooo how many successful Ipsen batches have you made? You don't need to answer, everybody on this board already knows the answer to that question...

That place was a loser before Lonza bought it, and continues to be a loser. Only a matter of time before it gets sold again.

Not sure how you think Doing the wrong testing, bad math and letting tainted product go out is not one of the problems? Then you yourself as with most people there just don't know the industry. Sad The SLT blows and they don't care. They Let other idiots there run that place to long but the QC and facilities are and were the worse.

I didn't know JM or BR well when I was there but they surely are not the reason Hopkinton is in its current state. It's because of bad SLT leadership or lack of any type of leadership in general from the SLT. The fish rots from the head down. AW and LW are not leaders and the mounting issues with Hopkintons inability to manufacture product that is actually acceptable is another reason. Stop blaming the soldiers and start looking at the root cause...

Holy Crap, JM is gone what are they going to do without a head of QC that doesn't have a clue to what he was doing? The guy was a dolt. The whole upper management is a pathetic group who does not care in the least of quality and getting a job done right. At least the engineers there know what they are doing!hehehe

BR was the biggest waste of space in the business she was the main reason that dump sux. lost samples no training did the calc on bioburden wrong for 13 years. she was an embarassment. If you called her on the lost sample by taking pictures time stamped when they were delivered she went ballistic behind your back. my kid ran a lemonade stand better than she did QC

Lonza is a joke. genz will find that out when they transfer
over purif. Someone needs to call Sanofi or soomthin.
Genz has had enough prob with C D . Lonza has to ability to
hold on to personn

Don't turn your back on LW, you'll find a knife in it. CW, JM and BR stood up and spoke the plain truth. That's not what SLT wants to hear. They just want to bring in temps from other sites to teach us how we're wrong, they're right, get us through the audit and dump the site.

I heard about BR and JM.... To be honest they're the lucky ones. They probably got packages while the rest of us will only get a lunch tokens. Besides, LW wasn't going to keep them around because they both would stand up to her. Oh well...the rest of us have to deal with it until we get "restructured" or they close the site.

There are a few that pay something around $10k a year. To have "editorial control" Lonza is not the only one. There are several others that's why so may posts "vanish" and others are so hard to understand. Big Pharma always has a way to make pain go away...Even if it's only the truth that hurts.LOL

...and the hard workers...two (BR and JM) were "re-structured" last week...

Please tell me more about companies paying to remove posts! I had posted something about a company's inferior products, and after a few days on the board the post just went away. It was within an old thread. Rest of the thread stayed intact. Only the post that exposed damaging facts about the company disappeared.

Lonza pays to remove posts. Not exactly "free"speech.

Rats are still jumping ship. Two more this week.

Worst place in all of Biotech to work.

Life Technologies is as bad if not worse.

Is the rumor mill broken? I can't believe there is no chatter about Hopkinton.

At Lonza, everything is about the ridiculous schedule they present to the client. Instead of 8 weeks for pre-campaign document creation, they budget 4. Instead of 4 weeks for equipment validation, they schedule 2. Corners get cut in important aspects, and they lean on the associates to get it done. And don't bitch about it either. If you pipe up with quality concerns they will railroad you ... believe me, I know.

When the place was Cambrex, I thought, "This is the place I'm going to retire from." The Lonza memories are very bitter aside from the few others who cared about quality.

what?????

Remember this post from 2 years ago?

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 10/09/2010 - 17:49.
its better? Where are you working? Its ok depending on who your boss is, but its still a very long way from being good.

There are decent people here, but there a lot of bad ones too. unfortunately a fair amount of bad ones are the decision makers/leaders. they are ruining what is left, another poster said something about "eyewash morale"...so true

Its a shame this place used to be great, I loved coming here. Its sad when something so good goes completely in reverse. Now I just put in my time and enjoy the good people that remain and even that is disappearing as many of them are moving on :(

I moved on two years ago - I remember Marathon, Co-Pharma...things WERE great. Hopkinton had a soul and felt like family back them. Things started to go bad with Cambrex and Ste 5&6 buildout. Now I watch my other half (left behind at lonza hop) struggle through week after week...I feel for those of you still there...and keep in touch often. Hope your futures work out...if you stay at the HOP or move on.

better contractors than perm employees.

Oh, but they're not layoffs, don't call them layoffs. Just a bunch of contracts that ended. So what if many of them weren't near their end yet, no layoffs here, we're fine. Meanwhile management is going out for their meetings, their version of the three martini lunch. Guess when you're management you don't have to work all of your paid hours. the company will pay you to eat up and drink up.

Contractors are out, SLT is clueless.

you know why its been so quiet in here? Cause the place still stinks and the masses have accepted it. Good luck to the few good people that remain behind hopefully long term exposure to the pathetic inner circle doesn't turn you to the mindless robot they hope to have in their ranks.

Just left and they did not care. They continue to fill open slots with temps and unqualified people off the streets. They under pay and promote the wrong people. Look at the supervisors running the place. A huge joke of worthless people trying to get product out the door which has Barkley happened since the year started. The big wigs do not care about the department that keeps the doors open which is manufacturing. QA QC and ask the others will soon be out of work because of it.

what??

I have seen the worst of the worst, yet I still have faith that Lonza can still pull the numbers up and make a real difference in the marketplace. DMY, but IMO the reason turnover matters is that company history is losst with the disenfranchised. OMG, but BFF isn't a term we used when I slogged it out shoulder-to-shoulder at Lonza's best

Good to see you have no biased point of view to sell.

The LonzaEmperor wears no clothes obviously. I suppose they have the right to demand remove defamatory, libelous and slanderous posts as well as any proprietary information.

Some of the posts removed were not any of this, IMO, this is typical of those who deal in threats and fear. They fear being exposed for what they are, like all bullies...
They probably think they can spin control all these problems into submission, or someone is just biding for some time before sh*t truly hits the fan. Unfortunately everywhere I look in BioTech, the few "successful" entrenched people are the problem; they ruin anyone else who brings honesty in reporting to any project in favor of "hierarchy" and status quo.

After CD left the company, I should have thought things would get better. In who's shadow do the "evil" doers lurk now? Concerns about quality and FDA should not be struck from the record; if anything OPEN communication on these issues will only improve Lonza and the Industry overall.

Very happy to have left, no plans to going back unless the schedule is sweet and the $ talks. Don't think they want me though because I say what others won't and what the powers that be don't want to hear.

BAD!!!!

Bring back the Baltimore site!!!!!!

warning letter is about the Ontac and Intralax drug product. there was a number of lots released that were OOS. Should I be worried? I have 3 boys and a home...

How bad is it with the warning letter?

So, now that Hopkinton has a warning letter issued against it, any chance the people there might start taking things seriously?