Plateau Selected By AstraZeneca to Manage Critical Training at Massachusetts Manufacturing Plant
Leading pharmaceutical company has fully implemented Plateau LMS at Westborough facility, easing regulatory compliance
ARLINGTON, VA -- May 1, 2002 -- Plateau Systems, a provider of enterprise-class software that manages all of an organization's learning and knowledge, today announced that AstraZeneca, a leading pharmaceutical company, has implemented the Plateau Learning Management System (LMS) to manage critical, federally mandated training at a key manufacturing facility.
AstraZeneca, one of the top five pharmaceutical companies in the world, is using Plateau LMS at its Westborough, Mass. manufacturing site, where the company makes popular respiratory products such as Rhinocort® Aqua™ (budesonide). Pharmaceutical plants must comply with stringent Good Manufacturing Practices and other rules enforced by U.S. Food and Drug Administration inspectors, such as 21 CFR Part 11 guidelines on the validity and security of electronic records. Training at such facilities is a sensitive, rigorously regulated and audited process. Plateau eased the difficult federal auditing and quality assurance process for AstraZeneca by gathering every employee's training history into an audit trail easily reviewed by inspectors, supervisors and employees themselves.
Plateau has made it much easier for us to track compliance, said Rick Elmer, training process manager at the Westborough facility. With the LMS up and running, training delivery is efficient and more accessible for everyone, and auditors can be confident in the accuracy of our data.
AstraZeneca has integrated Plateau LMS with its PeopleSoft Human Resources Information System (HRIS), so that employees are instantly assigned the proper training profile and curriculum when they are entered into the system. And to speed the adoption of Plateau throughout the facility, AstraZeneca identified, trained and certified 16 Plateau student access trainers throughout the Westborough facility representing manufacturing, technical services, QA (quality assurance) and supply warehouses.
AstraZeneca was able to eliminate nearly all of the paper associated with training on Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) documents, now captured and tracked by the Plateau LMS. Depending on their jobs, employees at the plant have to be regularly trained and retrained on many SOP documents assigned to each job function. Now, employees and managers are automatically alerted by e-mail when a training deadline is approaching. Also, when AstraZeneca's SOP for a policy or piece of equipment changes, Plateau LMS' configuration management feature automatically registers the revision and notifies every employee affected by it.
Our approach has been to find innovative ways to bring training closer to our employees, instead of just waiting for them to gravitate toward training, said Elmer. Also, we ensure that people with expertise in complex tasks are directly involved in training, and Plateau has helped us in both efforts. Plateau's LMS is so intuitive that employees from all functional areas have been able to master it quickly and guide others, and now we've been freed from a great deal of paper.
About Plateau: Plateau's enterprise-class software manages all of an organization's learning and knowledge on one scalable platform. Plateau 4 Learning Management System (LMS) is built on Web-based J2EE/EJB architecture, and is the engine behind the largest e-Learning initiatives in the corporate, non-profit and government markets. Plateau 4 LMS automates the management and delivery of online and classroom learning, organizational knowledge and competencies for clients including the American Red Cross, Motorola, Union Pacific and the U.S. Air Force. Plateau is listed as a leader in LMS evaluations from Gartner Inc. and META Group. The company is headquartered in Arlington, VA.
About AstraZeneca: AstraZeneca (NYSE:AZN) is a major international healthcare business engaged in the research, development, manufacture and marketing of ethical (prescription) pharmaceuticals and the supply of healthcare services. It is one of the top five pharmaceutical companies in the world with healthcare sales of over $16.4 billion and leading positions in sales of gastrointestinal, oncology, anesthesia (including pain management), cardiovascular, central nervous system (CNS) and respiratory products. In the United States, AstraZeneca is an $8.7 billion healthcare business with more than 10,000 employees. For more information about AstraZeneca please visit www.astrazeneca-us.com.
This press release contains forward-looking statements with respect to AstraZeneca's business. By their nature, forward-looking statements and forecasts involve risks and uncertainties because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that will occur in the future. There are a number of factors that could cause actual results and developments to differ materially. For a discussion of those risks and uncertainties, please see the company's Annual Report/Form 20-F for 2000.
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