Today I went to Miltenyi! Annette and I woke up early to take a flight from
Berlin to Cologne. Yesterday I did literally nothing. I just lied in bed all
day and watched Netflix. Basically it was like a day off from vacation, and
super relaxing. Annette had work to do, so while she was working on her presentation
at Miltenyi and grant applications; I watched movies, took naps, and a did a
little work for my meetings at Miltenyi. Afterword Annette made me dinner, we went for ice cream, and then walked to the Olympic stadium which is a couple minutes from her flat.
I apologize now because this post will
be very science heavy, and maybe only interesting to my co-workers. We arrived at the Cologne airport this morning, and took a car from the airport
to Miltenyi’s Headquarters in Bergisch Gladbach. There was a guy waiting for us
at the airport when we walked out and he drove us ~20 minutes to Miltenyi.
There
I met up with Dr. Matthias K
รถnn who I had met previously when he was in Seattle.
I had a business meeting with him before he took me on a tour of the Miltenyi
campus. It originally was a military base, so among the new buildings, there
were many older buildings. Matthias’ office is actually in one of the older
barracks buildings.
After that we went on a tour of one of the manufacturing areas
for the MACSQuant, their flow cytometer. Unfortunately, I could not take any
pictures inside the buildings (though apparently Annette did...), so this will not only be a science heavy post,
but also a text dense post.
Inside the MACSQuant manufacturing area, there were many machines being hand
assembled. I did not realize that each one was made by hand. I was told currently
they produce about 5 machines a week, with the goal of producing 10 a week. They
are also working to improve their productivity by working on a line, and 5Sing
their whole process. It was interesting to see that they are trying to introduce
the same processes that we are trying to do in our lab. I even saw a Kaizen board up in the hallway. Our guide, I forget his name, took
us through the different areas, from where they construct the main chassis, to
the optical bench, to the QC area. There was a long line of machines running a variety
of beads for calibration and reading, as well as engineers that were working on
the software. I also got to see the electronic system inside the Quant, which I’ve
never seen before. In the far corner of the room I also saw the a Tyto, cell
sorter, being constructed. It is such a pretty machine, not that we need one or
anything…
I was also taken through various offices, like the graphics department,
MACSQuant technical support (I now know where the technical people Tracy calls sit), and their training facility aka the MACS Academy. After all of that I met with their T cell immunology person and talked about
our cell isolations from solid tissues. I got some good feedback from her, and
a request to send her our data to compare and improve their products. After quick lunch I said goodbye to Annette to head to my last meeting of
the day with the GentleMACS, tissue processor, manger. After that I made my way to Cologne.
Tomorrow I will explore Cologne a bit and see what else I can find. I have two days to explore Cologne, before I head back to Miltenyi on Monday for more meetings. Hard to believe that I'll be headed home in 1 week. While it been fun to be on holiday, I have mixed feelings right now. I'm sad that I have to go back to work, but also after touring Miltenyi and talking science with people I'm excited to go back with what I've learned. I'm lucky to have had the opportunity to visit Miltenyi and tour around and meet people (though it helps that I was the customer of the year last year or something...) Thanks to Annette and Matthias for making my trip to Germany so memorable!
