Read below Dr Chatterjee’s success story:
What were the aims of your KTP project?
“Reckitt is a multinational consumer goods company home to some of the world’s most loved and trusted health, hygiene, and nutrition brands – like Air Wick, Dettol, Lysol, Durex etc. With its operation spread across over 68 countries spanning 6 continents and more than 40,000 employees globally, Reckitt’s products strive to protect, heal, and nurture in the relentless pursuit towards a cleaner and healthier world for everyone. In Reckitt’s continuous efforts to innovate during R&D, stability testing (shelf-life prediction) of healthcare formulations is integral to ensure their strength, quality, purity, and overall identity. During new product development/existing product optimisation, not every formulation will pass the procedure of stability testing to ensure that it meets the intended shelf-life and will need redevelopment. This can lead to high costs and delays in launching products, besides raw material wastage and sustainability concerns.
My KTP project aimed to develop an AI application for decision support in shelf-life prediction of healthcare products, which can efficiently predict, early in a project, the amount of active ingredient needed for overage, saving significant costs and time, and accelerating speed to market. The project placed a strong focus on learning from historical stability data to ensure that data-driven insights are combined with cutting-edge science to achieve innovation and sustainability goals.
The stability prediction tool we developed in the KTP is highly relevant to the theme of the Innovation Journey at Reckitt and academic research at the University of Hull because it represents a cutting-edge application of AI technology in the field of consumer health. With significant efforts in harmonising 14 years of historical data from multiple disparate sources at the business, we contributed to the uptake of digitalisation at Reckitt. By leveraging the power of machine learning and the outcomes of this KTP during R&D, Reckitt can accelerate the development and launch of safe and effective products, while also reducing the risk of product failure and ensuring customer satisfaction. These gains in R&D productivity can now be used to unleash better ideas and creativity to drive innovation in developing products that delight consumers and contribute to a cleaner, healthier world.”
What have been the positive and significant experiences from your project?
“I am extremely delighted having been a KTP associate in this project, and it helped in my career growth as an AI researcher in the industry. This KTP was Awarded Certificate of Excellence – Outstanding (highest grade) by Innovate UK for its outcomes. The aim was to facilitate innovation and knowledge exchange between academia and industry, which this KTP was able to deliver with high impact. With strong collaborations between global business teams at Reckitt and the University of Hull, I have seen how excited, amazed, and enthusiastic everyone in the project became with time during the KTP. Helping make complex stability testing data more easily understandable by facilitating predictions of shelf-life – with intuitive data analytics and AI led to excellent knowledge embedding. I made some great connections and friends for life – and I am very grateful to have received the visibility for our collaborative work that made this project’s impact and knowledge exchange reach R&D formulators and analysts across global business units and compliments from senior leadership, including the C-Suite executives at Reckitt.
The project was in an ambitious technical domain and involved significant cross-functional collaborations across multiple teams at Reckitt in North America and Europe. I used the time to pursue multiple opportunities – both within and outside Reckitt that contributed significantly to my personal development. These included participation in delivering talks at the academic partner, organising seminars, AI forums, workshops, giving TechTalks etc. at the business partner, publishing conference and journal papers on AI and sustainability with the academic partner etc. This led to several recognitions along the way including Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe recognition, International Knowledge Exchange Award from University, interviews with press, Green Talents Award visit to Germany, conference presentation in Canada, amazing training experience at Ashorne Hill and a CMI Level 5 Certification in Management & Leadership which was very productive! Finally, the KTP also led to my next job in the domain of AI at Reckitt and gave me the continued opportunity to succeed and build upon the learnings from this memorable project.
I am now using the knowledge gained in this KTP and extending it to target the 3 key performance metrics for improving Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) across Reckitt factories using data-driven modelling and new technologies – using predictive maintenance to improve availability, continued process verification (CPV) and predictive stability to improve quality, and augmented reality for training & preventive maintenance to improve performance.”
What were the key challenges you faced?
“One of the key (yet fun to tackle!) challenges was combining the power of machine learning with domain knowledge of human experts across the interdisciplinary areas of AI and chemistry. By leveraging cross-functional domain expertise of teams from across the knowledge base and the business partner, I was able to nicely tackle this challenge – sharing my AI insights with domain specialists while parallelly learning about the business context from SMEs. This way, our KTP contributed to developing machine learning algorithms that integrate specialised expert knowledge to inform and constrain AI-driven decision making for systems that are transparent, explainable, and reliable in practice, fostering user trust.”
How did your learning programme with Ashorne Hill help?
“The learning experience at Ashorne Hill had several wonderful components to it but for my KTP, I would say that 3 of the top bullet points that would always be memorable were (1) effective communication and stakeholder management (2) collaboration across cross-functional teams (3) quantifying the value & business impact of innovation projects. I will always remember how our trainer at Ashorne Hill, Rich, very warmly encouraged and inspired every KTP associate present during the learning programme to think outside of the box, collaborate with each other and learn to quantify impact and value in terms of numbers, which really transfer the technical innovations into real-world transformative impact for the business. The whole management training curriculum was very holistic and fun, and it never felt monotonous or boring even for a single day of the training due to the way it was organised to be interactive and engaging. Every single person at Ashorne Hill was charming and amazing to speak to and fostered the moral values of respect and care, which are so important for success in the corporate world – right from the staff at the reception to those at the restaurant.
Besides the formal learning, the Ashorne Hill visit also helped me learn the importance of small talks, having fun and engaging with new people (e.g. during dinners), going for a walk with other KTP associates during the learning programme (which definitely helped me come up with novel ideas for my own project, and also help other associates with my own knowledge exchange!) across the beautiful campus and so on.”
What have aspects of the learning programme have you successfully put into practice?
“I have put into practice all the top 3 areas of the learning programme that stood out for me from the KTP training experience. I engaged very actively with cross-functional teams with continuous communication and feedback from business and knowledge base; working closely with interdisciplinary teams of data specialists and domain experts in chemistry; and finally, working with the leadership to help quantify the business value of my KTP into measurable metrics that can show how transformative our tech innovations coming from academic research can be in real-world. I am grateful to Ashorne Hill as well as my KTP project team from the University of Hull, Reckitt and Innovate UK for their support and partnership throughout.”
How would you describe the experience of completing your KTP Management training at Ashorne Hill?
“Fantastic experience – I would say an experience every KTP associate would cherish throughout the KTP and even afterwards, as the learnings that came from the KTP Management Training aren’t just limited to the KTP, but really helped us learn how to grow in the corporate world. It is almost 8 months since my KTP project formally concluded, but even in my current role I continue to leverage the knowledge generated from the KTP and my learnings from the Ashorne Hill training to continuously innovate and drive business impact that can help contribute to Reckitt’s efforts for a cleaner and healthier world.”
Would you recommend the KTP Management training to other graduates/postgraduates? Why?
“100%! You can’t miss out on this once-in-a-lifetime experience of the KTP training. I started my KTP associate role right after finishing my PhD – so I was very specialised in the domain of AI research and innovation. However, the management training really helped me to explore the business side of things – learning how to engage with cross-functional teams, senior leadership and even external organisations (e.g. startups) to continuously do the right thing always and help develop data-driven techniques that are scalable and highly impactful. The learnings from this management training are definitely an opportunity to shine in your future career – and reach the pinnacle of success in the corporate world with your vision, hard-work and resilience.”
What 3 words best describe your experience at Ashorne Hill?
“Charming, inspirational, transformative.”
We are so pleased that Dr Chatterjee has enjoyed his time here with us at Ashorne Hill, and we wish him the best with all his success! Find out more about how Ashorne Hill can help your organisation by enquiring now.
