Adaptive Engineering: The Next Leap for CDMOs

CEO and Founder of Vector Talent, Neil Kelly, provides a unique perspective on the future of CDMOs:

‍

The Systems Shift

Welcome to the era of Adaptive Engineering in CDMOs.

Not traditional engineering. Not just digital transformation, but a fully integrated model where design, automation, and data move as one.

Adaptive Engineering is:

• Facilities that learn
• Platforms that flex
• Systems that speak the same language—from molecule to market

It’s the only way CDMOs will scale speed, compliance, and margin at the same time.

Tech alone won’t solve your capacity headaches; it’s the integration that matters.

I still remember the first time I heard the term Mechatronics. It stopped me in my tracks. It wasn’t just a buzzword, but rather, it was a glimpse of what was coming: disciplines colliding, systems learning, people orchestrating machines and data together. At that moment, I knew this industry was going to change forever.

Today the question is now: Who’s going to be the Flextronics of Pharma?
The one who masters digitalisation, takes cost out of complexity, delivers services with surgical precision, and finally makes this business profitable?

The race isn’t for the biggest footprint. It’s for the smartest system.

‍

The People Shift

The truth of this change is that none of this works without people who can adapt just as fast as the technology.

Across my career, from touching every corner of a network, Drug Substance, Drug Product, every type of site you can imagine

I’ve seen what happens when small, hyper-focused teams are given the right tools and the trust to deliver. The impact is massive.

In every CDMO I’ve worked with, the bottleneck isn’t always the system.

It’s the skillset.

You can have predictive maintenance, digital twins, and automated workflows, but if your engineers, program leads, and quality teams can’t interpret, challenge, and act on that data? You’re just running expensive machinery.

Adaptive Engineering needs:

• Engineers who bridge design, automation, and compliance.
• Commercial leads who can turn system speed into sponsor value.
• Quality leaders who see risk before it’s on a dashboard.

The smartest systems will be useless without the smartest operators.

‍

The Partnership Shift

When Adaptive Systems meet Adaptive People, that’s when partnerships change forever.

In the old model, sponsors bought capacity.
In the Adaptive model, they buy capability, and that capability lives as much in people as it does in systems.

When both are firing:

• Sponsors get clarity earlier. You can tell them if their program is viable before they sink months of cost.
• You remove friction between science and supply because your teams are fluent in both.
• Every decision becomes strategic, not just operational.

That’s the moment you stop being a vendor and start being a critical node in a sponsor’s value chain.

‍

Final Thought

The CDMOs that win in the next decade won’t be the ones with the most square footage or the shiniest tech stack.
They’ll be the ones who align systems, people, and partnerships so tightly that speed, trust, and profitability become inseparable.

I’ve stayed in this industry because it’s never been just about the tech or the molecules. It’s about the people who make all of it work, from the shop floor to the sponsor boardroom.

‍