Dan Buck

Hi, I’m Dan Buck, I’m the Senior Director, Combination Products and Devices, in the Research and Development team at Teva’s Waterford site.

I’ve been at Waterford for 20 years… Initially, I worked in Teva Global Operations (TGO) as a device engineer and then I transitioned into Research and Development looking after various laboratory automation and the development of delivery systems, specifically respiratory products. My responsibilities have now grown beyond Waterford, to incorporate device engineering teams in Northern Ireland and Israel.

I started off working as a mechanic working in a garage… I was interested in physics, science, maths, and I was encouraged to apply myself a bit more, so I studied a mechanical engineering master’s course at Newcastle University. My specific interest was in manufacturing, so I adapted my course after the first year to be a mechanical and manufacturing engineer. During the course, I realised mechanical design is very interesting, but how we manufacture things and develop products for high-scale manufacturing, that’s really what I was passionate about.

My passion for manufacturing still stands… We’re developing generic products and saving people’s lives; we want to clearly understand the problems people have using our products. But being able to manufacture them with a high degree of accuracy and certainty is what I’m most invested in.

The launch of our digitally connected inhaler has been my career highlight so far… We went from inventing the concept, presenting that to senior management with a business case and justifying and providing rationale for the development programme, which was extensive. We then took it from regulatory approval to seeing them come off a manufacturing line and going out to the market. That was a full end-to-end product development, so the achievement around that was enormous.

My focus is on my teams and people… I love getting hands-on and looking at different processes but, with the difficult climate we’re working in right now, my focus is on supporting and understanding my teams. From day to day, you’re faced with different complexities, prioritisations and decisions you need to make. It’s something I like to call ‘people engineering’, which is how I spend most of my time.

We’re always looking to get a broad spectrum of disciplines and nationalities within our team… Even though we’re based in Waterford, there’s eight nationalities within our team of 20 people. Diversity is something that’s very prominent at Teva and something we’ve seen success from.

When we’re looking for new people, one of the most important factors is that they’re the right fit for us, and we are for them. The importance of what we do is integration with others and understanding other people. Having different cultures and diverse disciplines has been important to our team because it’s the foundation for communicating what we do and for understanding the problems we need to solve.

Teva has a reputation for making bold decisions… Our braveness to make these decisions and implement real change, is very exciting for me and for people looking to join Teva. Our willingness to experiment and find new solutions is one of the reasons why I’ve stayed with Teva for as long as I have.

Our ambition is for people to stay with us… At Waterford, we have a very close-knit community that’s very welcoming and inclusive; we make a huge effort to induct and onboard new people into our team.

If I look at my own management team, we’ve all worked together for more than 10 years. I can look at some people who have been here for 25 to 30 years and that’s a testament to the great network and integrated teams we have here.