Cited from Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Magazine The initiative that was piloted in Arecibo aimed to transform and reinvigorate the company’s manufacturing operations and is already being applied in other Merck plants world-wide. "The Merck Production System is based upon Lean principles such as demand pull, continuous flow of product, waste elimination, continuous improvement and customer service. These objectives are reflected in Arecibo’s achievements within the last year: 50% overall reductions in cycle time; 65% reduction in product testing time; 30% reductions in inventory for some product; 10 to 20% operating expense reductions; 50% reduction in changeover time on some packaging lines." Besides these achievements in the manufacturing system, "workers are being encouraged to take on multidisciplinary roles." Communication between management and workers, and amongst all staff has become much more efficient; they are holding regular meetings to communicate their goals, accomplishments and concerns; internal newspapers and web correspondence has been created and employees are getting role-based training.