Johnson & Johnson is a leading American healthcare company ranked #37 on the Fortune 500. It produces numerous consumer products and medicines. J&J is implementing Internet of Things (IoT) technologies across its operations to increase efficiency and flexibility. Collaborative robots like YuMi are helping to automate repetitive tasks. IoT sensors also allow for continuous manufacturing of products like contact lenses and enable remote monitoring of medical devices like implants. J&J aims to digitize its entire supply chain using technologies like 3D printing, robotics, and real-time data analytics and tracking to improve production and customer experiences.

1. Assignment 2
Johnson & Johnson
Akhilesh Krishnan
B-batch
Johnson & Johnson is an American multinational corporation founded in 1886 that develops
medical devices, pharmaceutical and consumer packaged goods. Its common stock is a
component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the company is ranked No. 37 on the
2018 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. J&J is one of
the world's most valuable companies.
Johnson & Johnson's brands include numerous household names of medications and first
aid supplies. Among its well-known consumer products are the Band-Aid Brand line of
bandages, Tylenol medications, Johnson's Baby products, Neutrogena skin and beauty
products, Clean & Clear facial wash and Acuvue contact lenses.
Applying IOT at J&J
(i)YuMi – A Collaborative Robot
Next-generation manufacturing tools and techniques are introducing radical changes to the
Johnson & Johnson factory floor. For example, Internet of Things (IoT) sensors are currently
being utilised to collect data from various manufacturing processes. This data is then
processed by analytics systems to constantly refine and perfect operations in real-time.
The company can apply the same concepts to prevent machine failure – such as with the
predictive real-time modelling to determine when equipment is starting to deviate from
historical process ranges. More exciting than this, however, has been the introduction of
robots within Johnson & Johnson’s supply chain division. Known as YuMi (short for ―you
and me‖), the machines are the world’s first collaborative, dual arm robots that are able to
work alongside humans and perform repetitive, routine tasks, helping to increase productivity
and thereby get products to consumers faster.
YuMi is able to tackle tasks that require a high degree of accuracy and repeatability, such as
assembling small parts, with incredible precision – in fact, YuMi is so precise that it can
thread a needle, making all supply chain work it performs highly accurate and reliable.
Stefan Beyeler, Leader of the Packaging Centre of Excellence at Johnson & Johnson, says
that using automating equipment like YuMi helps them create ―high-quality, innovative
products that will become more and more individualised.‖
(ii)Enabling the Shift from Batch to Continuous Manufacturing
Kathy Wengel is the chief supply chain officer of J&J. The company has 250,000 customers,
who account for roughly 100,000 orders per day on a globally balanced scale. The company’s
supply chain team, led by Wengel, is responsible for working with J&J’s R&D department to
bring to life every product the company makes around the world—more than 300,000
SKUs—and to make those, test those and deliver those to customers worldwide. Over the

2. past year, the supply chain team’s innovation strategy has become much more technology-
focused.
One of the key areas where IoT is having an impact at J&J is within its pharmaceutical
business. For decades, J&J has produced its tablets and pills through a multi-stage batch
process. However, thanks to its adoption of IoT technologies, J&J is the first pharma
company to win approval from the FDA to shift a product— Prezista, an HIV medication—
from batch to continuous manufacturing. That shift is enabled by in-line sensor technology
that allows the company to eliminate the separate testing and sampling steps.
The use of IoT-enabled continuous manufacturing opens up a much greater world of
flexibility, a dramatic reduction in cycle time, and allows the company to use its people
resources more efficiently.
In J&J’s vision care business, work is underway on the development of self-correcting
contact lenses and other lens platforms that can provide real-time data on the health of a
patient’s eyes. The company is also using IoT technology to produce contact lenses using
one-third the manufacturing space at twice the rate as previously.
The company is also partnering with HP to apply 3-D printing technologies to healthcare in
such areas as eye health, orthopaedics and consumer products. Combined with advances in
data mining and software, 3-D printing could enable distributed manufacturing models and
patient-specific products, therapies and solutions that deliver better outcomes, better
economics and improved global accessibility.
Linear synchronous motors (LSM) facilitate directly through IoT continuous part tracking
and rerouting in short spaces with no moving parts.
Other uses of technology include collaborative robots, which enable complete mimicking of
human articulation, allowing collaboration with a human. These robots are being used, for
instance, in the support of consumer product manufacturing. J&J also has a joint venture with
Verily, Google Alphabet’s Alphabet Inc.'s research organization devoted to the study of life
sciences. The two companies are developing a new generation of surgical robots that would
integrate medical device technology with robotic systems, imaging and data analytics. The
goal of robotics-assisted surgery is to provide surgeons with greater control, access and
accuracy during surgical procedures, thereby minimizing patient trauma and scarring while
accelerating post-surgical recovery.
On the medical devices front, J&J is exploring the idea of implanting sensors into artificial
joints, such as knees or hips, to monitor the range of motion a patient has from the joint while
in physical therapy. The success of a joint implant surgery comes not just from the procedure
itself, but from the preparation before the surgery as well as the rehabilitation afterwards. So
the IoT can not only provide data on production machinery but on devices carried within a
human being as well.
When it comes to J&J’s customer-focused technology, it’s important that the company is able
to track and trace products throughout its extended supply chain as they get handed
downstream from manufacturing to a distributor or to a customer. IoT allows J&J to gather
data—whether it’s scanned at the patient level in a hospital or on a truck in transit to its end
destination, and now even at the beginning of the raw material stage when might literally be
coming out of the ground—to provide a high level of assurance.

3. For instance, much of J&J’s vaccine portfolio requires the medicines be transported in frozen
conditions, even when the products are being shipped into sub-Saharan Africa. The ability to
have temperature sensors and monitors that are embedded with the product, transmitting real-
time signals to assure that the product is maintained at those temperatures, is an example
where IoT technologies provide significant human health value by connecting J&J’s
healthcare supply chain through real-time data.
IoT gives J&J the ability to make decisions on real-time data in an industry that has often
used separate testing that happens over days or weeks, feedback that you’d get customers on
a monthly basis. This is a very different world, and IoT is absolutely changing the pace of
how J&J run their supply chains.
That's exactly the type of IoT application that healthcare products giant Johnson & Johnson
are investing in. In fact, the $70bn, 130-year old manufacturer is in the process of reinventing
itself; via an annual spend of $2bn in technology.
From collaborative robots on the factory floor to improving patient experiences, Johnson &
Johnson is looking to digitise every link of the supply chain with help of IOT and
autonomous machines. And as the company announces its plan to reallocate resources into
further technological development and strategic collaborations, its clear Johnson & Johnson
will continue to be a leader in the space for many years to come.
Applying Automation at J&J Vision Care
The need to market and supply high-quality products to better the lives of consumers led J&J
Vision Care to work with a system integrator (Bastian Solutions) to design new processes at
its 200,000-square-foot finished goods warehouse and distribution centre in Jacksonville,
Florida. The processes are as innovative as the products J&J Vision Care is bringing to
market. At the highest level, J&J Vision Care has developed a segmented end-to-end supply
chain that uses data, connectivity, transparency and partnerships to meet the needs of big box
retailers and optical chains; optician and ophthalmologists; and the end customer, all from
one facility.
To make that supply chain a reality, J&J Vision Care has implemented some of the world-
class solutions being used by leaders in e-commerce fulfilment, such as automated storage
and goods-to-person picking solutions.
The new processes and systems were implemented to manage a new line of lenses for
consumers with astigmatism. The new solution uses mobile robotic shuttles to retrieve and
deliver storage totes to a picking station, where lights and a visual display direct picking.
Together, they extend the capabilities of a facility that was already using a set of automated
materials handling tools and picking technologies, such as A-frames, vertical lift modules
(VLMs), pick-to-light and robotic tote tilters..
The system will manage more than 10,000 SKUs when the new product line is rolled out this
year. As an added bonus, the system is expected to complement J&J Vision Care’s
sustainability initiatives.
Not all that long ago, the contact lens segment of the industry was far less complex. When the
first disposable contact lens came to market about 25 years ago, there was limited
competition and the narrow product line consisted of what is known as spherical lenses, a
perfectly round lens that fits on the eye and serves as the basis for vision correction. Product

4. was distributed through a channel known as ―the three O’s:‖ ophthalmologists, optometrists
and opticians. In a pre-Internet world, where catalogue orders took two to six weeks for
delivery, speed was less of an imperative.
In recent years, that world has become much more complex and competitive in every respect.
The distribution channel was expanded to include at least three segments. J&J Vision Care
introduced automation to the DC when the organization installed four A-frame picking
systems into a largely manual operation. The need was to minimize labour and space while
running the distribution centre 24/7 to keep up with the output in the manufacturing sites.
In the past few years, as the number of SKUs really grew; J&J Vision Care doubled the size
of its footprint and added a 100,000-square-foot, pick-to-light mezzanine for loose picks of
medium movers. Case picks, meanwhile, are made from the lower levels in the pallet storage
area, while the upper levels are used for reserve storage.
Last but not least, vertical lift modules, which are adjacent to the pick-to-light area, are used
for spare parts as well as the slowest moving SKUs. The various picking areas are all tied
together by more than 2 miles of conveyor: Once an order tote is electronically married to an
order, it is inducted onto the conveyor system and routed first to the pick-to-light area, the
VLM, and then the A-frame and, once it’s fully operational, to the new goods-to-person
picking area.
Adding a high-density, goods-to-person storage and picking solution was the next logical
evolution of the picking technologies in Jacksonville. The search for a new technology began
with the planning for the launch of a host of new products in the astigmatism line scheduled
for 2017. The launch would not only involve the roll out of new products, but the
management of more than an additional 10,000 SKUs.
They were trying to strike a balance between what is new and better than what we’re doing
and a technology that doesn’t make our processes more challenging than they need to be or
create the need for more spare parts and planned maintenances.
The consensus was that A-frames were not feasible for B and C items based on cost and pick-
to-light was too labour intensive. What was needed was something in between that could also
become a core technology across the global DC footprint. During their working sessions, they
evaluated a number of options, taking into consideration their SKU base and order patterns
The result of that search was to implement the type of goods-to-person solution in the vision
care market that is used by leading retailers and e-tailers. The solution uses six high-density
storage units serviced by independent mobile robots that put away and deliver storage totes to
output lanes that feed the goods-to-person workstations. The totes can be segmented into
quadrants, which allow J&J Vision Care to expand storage in the system through better
utilization of a tote.
The storage density really works for what they need for the business. The system also met the
order throughput requirements, since totes are continuously fed to a picking station: Once a
tote has been depleted, the next tote is waiting behind it. Finally, as long as there is space, it
is relatively easy to expand the storage capacity of a unit or add additional units and lanes.
Finally, J&J Vision Care is exploring automation for the packing operations, which is a very
flexible but a manual process. And with embracing new technologies and evolving with
dynamic changes in technologies J&J aims to attain a position in the industry that will stay
unchallenged for a long time.