Pharmaceutical Production Scheduling

Day-to-day production scheduling in an international pharmaceutical company

Daily production scheduling can be fraught in any manufacturing environment. The inter-relationship between processes and resource conflicts in many pharmaceutical operations makes the task especially demanding. In this case study we learn how one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies is using Orchestrate each day in a production facility producing vaccines and self-injected prescription medicines.

The process - a study in complexity

Biopharmaceutical vaccine production is characterised by complex processes involving a large number of intermediate solutions. In this instance, there is an added dimension of multiple trains operating simultaneously, many of which share resources. Multiple stages and multiple products vying for the same space in the manufacturing suite. It involves hundreds of discrete activities to be performed, solutions to be made and cleans to be carried out on bioreactors, columns and filtration systems, all in a 24/7 environment that involves 200 people. The manufacturing plant is hard piped, so everything has to be finely synchronised to work optimally.

From spreadsheets…

The ubiquitous ‘morning production meeting’ had previously been dominated by Excel spreadsheets prepared and maintained by four full time planners for one product set and a further three for the second. Each had an intimate knowledge of specific parts of the production process, involving many hundreds of discrete solutions and activities. Because of the complexity, the rolling plan could cover only a week ahead, updated daily to accommodate all the unforeseen events that had happened in the previous 24 hours. The process was laborious, taking a whole morning each day, the separate plans lacked detail and engineering had to be planned informally between planners and engineers. It was not uncommon for electrical engineers, mechanical engineers and equipment to turn up for planned maintenance, only to learn that the schedule had changed and production was in process.

… to automation and full visibility

Having installed Orchestrate production scheduling software, the company reports that the process is so much smoother and more effective. Using fewer schedulers, the daily rolling plan now covers a four week period, rather than one, and takes only an hour to complete, instead of a morning.

A company director comments: “Particularly important, communications have been revolutionised. Everyone in the facility has access to the plan from shift managers and supervisors to shift engineers and engineering planners.  Giant touch-screen smart boards are sited on the floor and user screens provide access around the plant. A real-time ‘single version of the truth’ available to everyone, in an environment where processes take place in multiple rooms. A major benefit from improved communications has been significantly smoother shift changeovers.”

A senior planner describes the improvements to engineering planning: “Where maintenance had previously been performed as an ‘add on’, it is now fully integrated. Maintenance activities determined within our SAP system are now fed into Orchestrate, which schedules (and more importantly re-schedules in light of unplanned changes) maintenance tasks into non-production slots. The same is true for calibration of equipment and unplanned requests for downtime. Everyone informed.”

Implementation was smooth too. Recognising that most people are resistant to change, the Orchestrate production scheduling plan is displayed in much the same way as the old Excel spreadsheets, except it is now possible to burrow down into detail. A six week parallel run was planned to accommodate the change from old to new but, in practice, reactions from users were so positive, the parallel run was dropped after just a few days.

Last word comes from the plant director responsible for vaccine production: “For me, visibility is the biggest single win; everyone having access, whatever level of detail they need. That alone fully justifies the system.”

Pharmaceutical Capacity Planning

Major international pharmaceutical company uses Orchestrate production scheduling software to drive strategic initiatives

A number of pharmaceutical companies who use Orchestrate as their day-to-day production scheduling and capacity planning tool are also exploiting its functionality to address key strategic issues. In this case study, we visit a plant belonging to one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, where Orchestrate has been employed in two major initiatives. The first, to boost productivity, significantly increasing capacity for the years ahead while using existing facilities. The second initiative is using Orchestrate’s modelling capabilities in a multi-million project to rationalise production, moving plant from one continent to another to create a ‘greenfield’ site.

Boosting capacity

The production team responsible for a group of self-medicating products within the plant were faced with the challenge of increasing manufacturing productivity. Orchestrate production scheduling software proved to be an ideal tool because, in its day-to-day scheduling role it had automated and build-in all the deep practical expertise of schedulers who understand  the plant, the way product moves through it, and the complex conflicts that exist with shared equipment and sequencing.

A company director explains: “Having put all the process basics into Orchestrate and having enhanced it, with help from Production Modelling, we were able to extend it to become a modelling tool capable of exploring ways to optimise the use of the facility. We were able to identify bottlenecks, to plug in fixes and build ‘what if’ scenarios in a true modelling sense. We then embarked on carefully chosen projects in which we already felt a high level of confidence using orchestrate in a day-to-day scheduling role. We knew they would work.”

“We have just completed a twelve month programme, removing bottlenecks and optimising the plant and have achieved a 20% faster throughput. We are now going into 2012 with higher capacity using exactly the same resources. That would have been impossible using traditional spreadsheet-type planning and scheduling tools.”

Manufacturing rationalisation

Like so many pharmaceutical companies, this multination is seeking to consolidate manufacturing into a smaller number of plants. The vaccine in question has a number of sub-types, currently manufactured within different sites in different continents.  The plan is to concentrate production within one site.

It has not been possible to accommodate the sub-types within existing facilities, which has meant completely rebuilding and recommissioning an existing suite, resulting in two separate suites.

The company has used Orchestrate to secure an understanding of how things will look day-to-day in terms of activities and in terms of resourcing. A future snapshot, as well as resource and capacity planning.

They have been able to model requirements for the next 5 years, as well as visualising the mix of products to arrive at a realistic plan of action.

The director responsible has extensive experience of such projects and comments: “Traditionally, spreadsheets such as Excel have been used to plan such activities, typically using a common server to provide an element of shared functionality. The difficulty with such an approach is that it is limited essentially to a chart comprising coloured squares.”

“Orchestrate has provided a wealth of information behind that. It’s possible to drill down to hours, minutes, seconds, rather than being restricted to crude day or half day blocks. Equally important, we have been able to apply ‘what if’ scenarios, particularly around capacity-related numbers. It is in the nature of forecasting that the further you move into the future, the less valid the numbers become. With Orchestrate, we have been able to look at what the forecasters have been saying, and then apply a range of variations. Using spreadsheets it would take days to accommodate secondary or parallel processes, figuring what a schedule might look like, while another team is separately figuring our recruitment needs – everyone speculating from their own spreadsheets. Orchestrate has given us the clarity of vision we need.”

Conclusion

The company has been able to use Orchestrate’s modelling capabilities in two projects, each with multi million dollar implications.  All that from the same easy to use software they are using for their daily scheduling”.

Call us now to find out how Orchestrate production scheduling software could help your operation.