Dan Ramirez Leads Teva Pharmaceuticals into a New Age of Facilities Management

Managing two hundred facilities across sixty countries, the VP is creating a lean, efficient real estate portfolio and streamlining facility operations around the world

Photo: Brett Tyler Studios Inc.

By Russ Klettke

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Upon immigrating to the United States from the family’s native Dominican Republic, the parents of Dan Ramirez, Flory and Delis, soon realized what it would take to make a good life in their adopted country. Following Delis’s stint in the US Navy, they followed their ambitions, worked hard, and built a small and successful grocery store chain while also establishing a presence in the local real estate market.

The work ethic exhibited by his parents wasn’t lost on Dan Ramirez. Through a combination of diligence and persistence, today he is vice president and head of global facilities management for Teva Pharmaceuticals, a global leader in generic and specialty medicines with more than forty million square feet in two hundred facilities across sixty countries. The real estate know-how he learned from his dad—combined with his fluency in English, Spanish, and Portuguese—is clearly helping him succeed – and lead–in his chosen profession.

Dan Ramirez, Teva Pharmaceuticals, portrait vertical large — Dan Ramirez, Vice President, Head of Global Facilities Management, Teva PharmaceuticalsPhoto: Brett Tyler Studios Inc.

A Complex, Global Footprint

At Teva, headquartered in Petah Tikva, Israel, Ramirez oversees a mix of global sites used by Teva employees to perform a variety of activities—manufacturing, research and development, commercial, distribution, and warehousing—all with the singular mission of improving the lives of patients. Within these facilities, Ramirez’s team manages all hard and soft services ranging from construction and maintenance to dining services and security.

Like many companies inside and outside of the pharmaceutical industry, Teva has acquired several companies over its lifespan. With so many legacy sites, Teva leadership recognized the importance of managing its real estate in a more rational and efficient way—a significant opportunity that Ramirez was tasked with upon joining Teva in in 2015.

In certain situations, consolidating offices requires relocating people. Doing this well and with employee engagement and satisfaction in mind is very important to Ramirez. For example, Teva is expanding its new US headquarters in Parsippany, New Jersey, to nearly 350,000 square feet while exiting multiple sites in Pennsylvania and Kansas City—not an easy change for many. The job of Ramirez’s team is to build an effective new workspace while also ensuring a flawless move.

“Bottom line,” says Ramirez, “my team’s job is to manage the site consolidation seamlessly and ease the employee transition.”

Driving Toward More Efficient Sites

But that’s only one aspect of Ramirez’s role. He is also leading a company-wide program designed to standardize how the infrastructure of Teva sites operate—a challenging and far-reaching assignment that also requires consolidating internal services under a single supplier: Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL).

How will integrating the management of its facilities benefit Teva? Ramirez offers one small example. “Not too long ago we utilized multiple cleaning and landscaping companies at several locations, which was not a workable long-term solution for a company that values efficiency,” he explains. “By changing the way we think and operate, we are leveraging our buying power wherever we can. It took us a few years and the participation of many to get to this point, but we are starting to see the results that we expected.

“If we do this right over the long term, Teva will be in the position to reduce the cost of operating our facilities by as much as twenty percent. That’s a substantial return we can re-invest into the good work we do for our patients around the world.”

“We will monitor the effectiveness of the contract through key performance indicators and an effective governance process at both the global, regional, and local levels,” he adds.

Ramirez admits that Teva’s focus on integrated facilities management is quite complex, and he calls on every bit of his rich experiences at Motorola Solutions, Ocwen Financial, and ADT Security to move the program in the right direction. His successful career—across very different industries—has provided Ramirez with the perspectives he needs to lead large-scale global projects, like those he is accountable for at Teva.

“If we do this right over the long term,” Ramirez says, “Teva will be in the position to reduce the cost of operating our facilities by as much as twenty percent. That’s a substantial return we can re-invest into the good work we do for our patients around the world.”