In late 2008, David Roberts CBE attended the inaugural Wales Innovation Awards of which Penn Pharma was a sponsor. David told Penn the story how he approached 15 companies at the same time as his able-bodied sporting friend David Davies. Out of the 15 companies, David Davies received a 75% response rate, 25% of which offered him funding; David Roberts received no responses.

David, who was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at the age of 11 was encouraged to participate in swimming activities as a form of physical therapy, from there he went on to his first major competition for Great Britain at the 1999 European Disabled swimming Championships in Braunschweig, Germany where he won all four of his races. He competed in his first Paralympic Games in Sydney in the summer of 2000 where he won an impressive haul of seven medals.

It was this meeting that inspired us to call the new quality and efficiency improvement programme at Penn "Going for Gold".

Going for Gold currently has five core components:

• Training
• OP MOP
• Quality (GFGQ)
• Site Development
• Communications

Training
We carried out a comprehensive training evaluation across the whole of the company and built up skills matrices and trained people in areas which were considered beneficial or essential. This training is ongoing and is connected to all active Going for Gold projects.

OP MOP
Penn’s Operational Materials Management Programme was headed up by Leanne Wagstaffe with support from Darren Hassey, Chief Operations Officer, and the OP MOP Team. Penn invested over £350,000 in a state-of-the-art inventory management system – incorporating real time bar coding control, unprecedented levels of stock accuracy and the Penn Customer Portal. This makes it one of the first companies in Europe to provide customers with an all-encompassing, remote access global product and inventory tracking service. The whole process took only 9 months to complete, which is a staggering accomplishment by any business standards.

Quality
Probably the largest project of Going for Gold is the Quality project, so much so it is heading up many other sub-projects, all designed to make Penn Pharma a World Class organization. GFGQ is led by Melanie Burles and sponsored by Karl Fry, Director of Quality. GFGQ has addressed the Induction Programme for staff, the Training Procedure, new state-of-the-art documentation and information software, Achiever+^©, Documentation Control, internal processes and procedures, Proposal Writing as well as Penn’s aim to be ICH Q 8, 9 & 10 accredited.

Site Development
Led by Richard Barnett, Head of Engineering at Penn Pharma and supported by Darren Hassey, Chief Operations Officer and the Site Development Team, Penn completed the first phase of its £12m expansion programme by investing £315k in upgrading the site and improving transport access in September 2009.

As part of sustained investment in the site, and partly backed by the Welsh Assembly Government's Single Investment Fund, Penn has extended its facilities by 2400m² and completely changed the transport and delivery infrastructure our Tredegar head quarters.

The recent developments to the site only add to established offering. By altering the externals of the site and moving the delivery and collection points we have in turn altered the internal factory processes, ensuring the smooth flow of people, process and materials. The £12m expansion plans are planned to be rolled out throughout the next five years with completing upgrades in keeping with our growth.

Communications
Penn Pharma has stepped up its communications both internally and externally by investing in Digital Signage around the site, new email marketing software, increased use of email communications, implementation of an internal newsletter for staff, a State of the Nation address to all Penn Staff every quarter by the CEO, Peter George, Executive Members "Walk the Talk" on a monthly basis where they visit different areas of the site and have informal discussions with staff and also an Employee of the Month award which recognises efforts and continuous improvement, nominated by staff members themselves. This project is led by Marketing Co-ordinator Emma Lee and is supported by HR Director Jo McCafferty as well as the entire GFG Team.