Capacity Planning / Production Scheduling within the Pharmaceutical Industry

Production Modelling’s flagship scheduling software system, Orchestrate, has become firmly established within the process industry and many users in the pharmaceutical industry have seen great success in its deployment.

Orchestrate assists with two areas of work where purpose built tools are few and far between. To begin with, it provides the process engineer with a user friendly tool for capacity analysis. Secondly, having invested much time and money in plant design, the same Orchestrate model can then be used for daily production scheduling and planning.

Orchestrate has seen an equal amount of success when integrated into plant design programmes and also as part of a programme to identify and solve bottleneck problems in existing, well established plants.

One of the world’s largest bio-pharmaceutical capital investments - Pfizer BioPharma Campus, West Dublin

Reduce Time To Market

There is much reference material with regards to process knowledge management as a method of accelerating time to market. In summary, if we could utilise that same data at the design stage, pilot stage and the commercial production stage, then there would be much to gain.

Orchestrate scheduling software extends this argument by providing a common dataset and interface for each individual stage of the production process. With Orchestrate scheduling software the plant can be operated identical assumptions and constraints to those used at the design stage.

As a result, another major advantage of using Orchestrate is that the software system can hold process templates for particular products and processes. Thus the company’s intellectual property can then be reused for the latest products and new plants. In effect, we would not need to “reinvent the wheel” every time we use the system. So, through using Orchestrate for new plant design, plant modification and daily planning, the plant design process can be accelerated and, therefore, we can decrease the time to market. Read more…….

Barclays Cycle Hire Utilises Simulation and Scheduling Software from Production Modelling

Company: Serco

The extremely complex logistics behind the redistribution effort for 6,000 bikes around 400 docking stations involving over 10,000 docking points, with enormous ebbs and flows of demand over the course of each day, is a huge challenge. Over the first six months of operation, Barclays Cycle Hire members pedalled the equivalent of ‘13 times the distance to the moon and back’ – over 10 million kilometres in 2.5 million journeys. Production Modelling have been working in conjunction with the service provider, Serco, to highlight the best methods of managing the redistribution of bikes, both now and as the scheme expands – with amazing results.

The Challenge - Moving Complexity Away From The Point Of Delivery

It is important to understand the vast scale of the operation. Fifteen per cent of the demand during each day takes place over just one hour, between 8.00 am and 9.00 am, involving around 3,000 cycle hires. A large proportion of this activity is generated by commuters who are arriving at mainline rail stations. With an average hire time of 20 minutes, each bike is re-docked across a extremely wide area, particularly concentrated in the city. In order to maintain high customer service standards, these cycles have to be redistributed to the high volume demand locations as fast as possible. At the end of the working day, the flow reverses and commuters making up the majority of users, expect availability of bikes close to their workplace. All this activity is carried out against stringent Key Performance Indicators which are designed to allow the hire experience to be as simple and as efficient as possible for members.

Modelling and Simulation

Graham Bright, Customer Experience Manager at Serco, joined the project in April 2010 and quickly identified the role that planning, modelling and simulation software systems could perform in making informed decisions. A highly detailed tender document was prepared and Production Modelling’s Service Model simulation software was chosen from a shortlist of three systems. According to Graham, the proposal from Production Modelling demonstrated the best functionality and most cost effective performance. The truly unique aspect, though, was an extra software solution, Orchestrate, that takes the user beyond simulation into visualisation.

Service Model assists Serco in working out the efficiency of their redistribution vehicle operation, while Orchestrate enables them to observe the reasons why various areas are performing differently. They can operate ‘what if’ scenarios which are based on validated data.
The system also enables them to feed a real day’s data to simulations, including the quantities and types of redistribution vehicles, where they had been allocated, and the various tasks assigned to them. Managers can then observe performance in terms of the amount of traffic at docking stations, running simulations with data they know they can trust. From there, it is easy to extrapolate the implications of, say, a 25,000 or a 30,000 hire day. Read more…….

Burbidge Short Case Study - Pro-Model Simulation Software is not just for Large Companies

Production Modelling, a leading provider of cutting edge simulation, planning and scheduling software and consultancy, based in the UK, wishes to congratulate Burbidge & Son Ltd on their exceptional application of the ProModel Simulation Software, for which it has also been acknowledged, as a highly commended case study, by MCS magazine.

As all businesses continually strive to meet rising market demands and improve overall performance, change has become obligatory. However, testing out new ideas in an operational environment – whether it’s the shop floor, warehouse or office - can be time consuming, disruptive, and also very expensive, especially if the new ideas don’t work first time. Similarly, very few businesses can afford for investment in new equipment to fail to deliver the expected benefits. The solution, which is now being implemented by businesses of all sizes, and from diverse industries such from general manufacturing to pharmaceutical and food processing, is to first test new ideas using ProModel Simulation Software.

Burbidge, a well established manufacturer of high-quality kitchens and SME, has discovered that using its ProModel Simulation software system to fully assess production process change ideas and research investment decisions, delivers exceptional benefits; negating many the potential risk involved and significantly improving the decision making process. Also, although ProModel is considered to be one of the most advanced systems in the field of dynamic simulation modelling, the software has proven to be very cost effective and has been very easily implemented.
As Graham Heaven, Burbidge's financial director, observes, "Often, companies make process change or investment decisions based on gut feel, or on simplified and inaccurate assessments, and then wonder why these changes fail to meet expectations. Yet, as we have found, the tools for making important operational decisions based on realistic data are now readily available, easy to use, and only need a relatively small investment - especially compared to the potentially enormous cost of getting it wrong."

It doesn't matter what size the company may be, simulation should be an integral part of their decision making process, whether it's operational – e.g. adding new machinery, redesigning layouts, factory or warehouse extension, introduction of new products, introducing new production methods, re-engineering a process or strategic – e.g. can the business justify a capital investment, will it produce the desired performance improvement? How can our supply chain be streamlined?

The cost of Pro-Model Simulation software is minimal in comparison with the potential benefits and rapid return on investment. Increasingly, businesses cannot afford to risk making bad decisions. It's common sense really – you have to ask the question - why wouldn't you use simulation before making operational and strategic decisions? Read more.....