Pharmaceutical Technologist - March 2008 - (Page 18)

Simulating for success Is your company working at peak efficiency? Steve Hemsley harmaceutical companies invest millions each year in the pursuit of operational excellence. The market is increasingly competitive and players must ensure they maintain the all important competitive advantage in every area of the business, ensuring optimum levels of performance from personnel, equipment and processes. Such organizations conduct hundreds of lean and/or six sigma workshops each year to investigate potential changes in processes that could improve operations across the board — be it deciding which new equipment to buy, considering changes to production schedules or contemplating changes to shift patterns. These evaluative exercises help create a list of potential improvement projects. From there, pharmaceutical manufacturers will need to consider: ● Where the projects should be applied. ● When they should be applied. ● How much should be spent to achieve a predicted benefit. ● Whether to build a new facility or improve an existing one. ● Whether investment in new capital equipment can be justified. But how can they ensure they conduct the best projects? And how can they prioritize the projects on the list? With more data to contend with, operational excellence questions are becoming increasingly complex and, therefore, more difficult to cope with. Add to this the increasing pressures from regulatory bodies such as the Medicines and Healthcare P Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and FDA, as well as the need to develop strategies to decrease carbon footprints, and it is easy to see why pharmaceutical manufacturers face a time of intense performance scrutiny. Furthermore, new found challenges brought about by increased competition, challenging targets, higher customer expectations, and shareholder influence has put added pressure on the shoulders of pharmaceutical manufacturers. As a result, the mantra for today’s pharmaceutical business is ‘more, cheaper, faster, better.’ Out with the old Gone are the days when manufacturing capacity and capability forecasts and questions could be answered by a system of spreadsheets. Today’s companies must be more scientific in their approach, and in-depth information is required to factor in all variables to calculate exact manufacturing timescales and processes. Inserting this information into a variety of linked spreadsheets is no longer enough and the real question is how to make best use of this information. Forecasting what will work for an individual company is not easy. Assessing which options will give the best return on investment, and which will meet performance targets effectively and efficiently is a game of a chance — one that will have serious implications should the wrong decision be made. Reaching a considered conclusion would probably be impossible using traditional static planning 18 MARCH 2008 PHARMACEUTICAL TECHNOLOGIST

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Pharmaceutical Technologist - March 2008 Contents News Morpheus Market Watch E-procurement Means Lean Procurement The Rational Enquirer Simulating for Success Q&A

Pharmaceutical Technologist - March 2008

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