How Boehringer Ingelheim built a connected workforce using ServiceNow

Boehringer Ingelheim is one of the world’s leading research-driven pharmaceutical companies, with a strong global footprint across human pharmaceuticals, biopharmaceuticals and animal health. At the heart of this network lies a commitment to quality, reliability and regulatory excellence — non‑negotiables in an industry where precision and compliance are paramount.

Growing demand for established therapies and specialty medicines has been pushing pharma companies to keep their operations flexible, efficient and resilient. At the same time, sustainability priorities have been changing how value is defined, shifting attention from output alone to broader environmental and social impact. Amid these shifts, the company also set its sights on modernizing shop‑floor operations using digital tools to enhance flexibility and efficiency as it expanded into emerging specialty‑care markets.

At Boehringer Ingelheim, the day‑to‑day shop floor activities were heavily reliant on manual and paper‑based processes, limiting transparency into real-time performance. Data was often fragmented, making it difficult to identify loss drivers quickly or to scale improvements consistently across sites. Operators spent significant time on administrative tasks, while managers lacked a single, integrated view of operations to support timely decision-making.

Over time, these limitations created broader risks. Without better visibility and stronger engagement on the shop floor, operational performance could not keep pace with business ambitions.

In response, the company set out to change its approach. The journey was fraught with challenges and the need for a comprehensive manufacturing overhaul became apparent, driven by stringent market demands and a commitment to innovation. With the guidance of EY teams, they shifted their focus toward improving Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and increasing supply network flexibility, while reducing emissions and avoiding the high costs of building new plants. The aim was not only to address current challenges, but to create a model that could bring together operational experience and a digital foundation, supporting change at scale.

The EY team’s approach began with a clear principle: manufacturing excellence cannot be sustained through technology alone. It must be embedded into how work is done every day, by the people closest to the process. Working closely with Boehringer Ingelheim, the account team decided to implement the EY Connected Manufacturing solution, a purpose-built application on the ServiceNow platform, for modernizing the manufacturing workforce. 

The solution was designed to digitize operators’ daily activities and continuous improvement routines, creating a single system where issues, losses, standards and actions could be captured and managed in real time. By connecting workers directly to data and workflows, the platform reduced non value added work and made performance transparent at every level. Rather than digitizing isolated tasks, the team focused on translating proven manufacturing methodologies into a connected, intuitive digital experience. This endeavor sought to help enhance production flexibility and efficiency, paving the way for entry into lucrative specialty care markets.

The EY team and ServiceNow experts worked hand in hand, helping ensure that the digital solution reflected leading-practice operational standards rather than abstract system requirements. The focus was not on reporting for reporting’s sake, but on helping enable faster problem-solving, clearer accountability and more consistent execution.

The solution helped them unlock value by:

• Scaling a trusted platform: Industrialized platform adaptable to vast amounts of data while providing leading-class security
• Supporting their workforce: Digitization streamlines workflows, helping enable employees to focus on higher-value tasks
• Increasing productivity and efficiency: Facilitation of better communication and collaboration among teams with integrated systems and shared dashboards

A pilot deployment was launched to test both the methodology and the technology in a live manufacturing environment. The collaboration between the EY team and ServiceNow emphasized a human-centric approach, helping ensure that all team members contributed to transformative strategies and fostering inclusivity in problem-solving. Through strategic alliances and a commitment to excellence, the EY team not only provided the right solution  but also reinforced its role as a trusted collaborator  in Boehringer Ingelheim’s journey toward innovation and long-term success.

The impact of the transformation was both measurable and far‑reaching. By digitizing shop floor work and making losses visible in real time, Boehringer Ingelheim achieved OEE improvements of 20%–30%, driven by faster issue resolution and more consistent execution. Automation reduced manual effort and errors, allowing operators to focus on higher‑value activities and problem-solving rather than administration.

Importantly, these gains translated directly into sustainability outcomes. Improved productivity enabled the organization to meet growing demand without constructing new facilities, avoiding significant capital expenditure and associated Scope 1 and 2 emissions.

Beyond the numbers, the cultural shift was equally significant. The shop floor adoption was strong, with operators actively engaging in continuous improvement and taking greater ownership of performance. Managers benefited from a shared, real‑time view of operations, enabling more informed decisions and fostering alignment across sites.

According to Marinie Voutsina, Operational Excellence Lead at Boehringer Ingelheim, “EY has played a pivotal role in helping Boehringer Ingelheim achieve Operational Excellence Prime, revolutionizing our approach and steering us toward the future. Their insights and guidance have been crucial in making our operations not only more efficient but also sustainability driven.”

The scalability of the solution is a key part of its wider impact. Built on ServiceNow and underpinned by a standardized manufacturing excellence framework, the Connected Manufacturing solution can be replicated across sites and countries. What began as a pilot evolved into a rollout model capable of supporting global deployment with consistent outcomes.

At the EY organization, we are defining the next generation of manufacturing transformation. Manufacturers today are at an Industry 4.0 inflection point. It is time to shift from trying and testing technologies to providing new worker experiences based on AI, analytics, data-driven and automated decision-making, digitally native ways of working and human-machine collaboration. This is where the EY organization can help.

For Boehringer Ingelheim, the transformation created a foundation for long-term resilience, where growth, efficiency and sustainability reinforce rather than compete with each other. More broadly, it demonstrated how manufacturers can move beyond incremental improvements toward a connected, people‑centric model of operational excellence, one where removing obstacles allows both performance and the potential to scale.

Special thanks to Matthias Brey and Kamran Mohtadi for contributing to this article.