With increasing pressure to reduce costs, pharmaceutical manufacturers need to find efficiency gains to remain competitive. But this must be achieved whilst maintaining quality and safety throughout the supply chain. There is also the need to release batches to market faster, with a reduced cycle time, whilst maintaining a flexible manufacturing environment.
Industry challenges and MES for pharmaceuticals
While some companies consider investing in more flexible equipment with faster changeovers, the upfront cost is considerable. In addition to this, delays and deviations will still occur at the remaining steps of the manufacturing process. Significant time may still be required to keep track of:
- Production
- Quality
- Inventory
- Maintenance operations
- Compliance
Relying on paper based systems
Relying on paper based and hybrid systems to keep track of operations has significant consequences. Our estimates, supported by MESA white papers, show that:
Incomplete entries or manual transcription errors occur in 1 out of every 10 entries
A paper batch record can take up to 16 hours to create
Average review times are up to 48 hours per batch
MES for pharmaceutical manufacturing: the solution
Pharmaceutical MES solutions such as electronic batch records (EBR), weigh & dispense and equipment management, are helping manufacturers to become more efficient.
Pharmaceutical manufacturers are achieving:
- Gains of >25% in productivity
- Reducing the time and stress associated with managing manufacturing using paper based systems
Manufacturers of generic and branded pharmaceuticals
The savings are considerable, yet for manufacturers of generic and branded pharmaceuticals, there are particular challenges. It is essential that pharmaceutical MES solutions are adapted to deal with them.
Our Shopfloor OnlineTM Life Sciences Edition MES solution has been specifically developed to meet such challenges with:
- Electronic batch records (eBR)
- Weigh and dispense
- Equipment management
- Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE)
- Electronic log books
- Electronic work instructions (eWI) for setup and cleaning
- PDF form flow for complete removal of paper
- Predictive and multi variate analysis
- Mobile applications
Equipment management software for pharma: the benefits
These core functions of our software deliver high productivity gains. For example:
- EBR can accelerate release times by 50-80%
- Weigh and dispense functions provide 100% verification of raw material and quantities
- Equipment management can ensure compliant equipment usage in line with validated business rules
- Electronic work instructions can add huge time gains
- Our software allows for increased compliance
- In our experience, 80% of the efficiency gains come from 20% of the functions
The key functions
Our transformative software provides a wide range of benefits for the pharma industry, including:
- Providing pre-defined workflow templates and a library structure for building master batch records
- Full integration with existing systems
- A web based system to avoid an IT footprint
- Modular licenses, only pay for what you need
- Rapid implementation taking around 6-9 months
- Simple screens that can be used to drag and drop master batch record configuration
- Pre-defined building blocks to get started quickly
- Support for business case development and training
Contact us to find out about our MES for pharmaceutical manufacturing.
