Qualified Lean Manufacturing Consultants
Toyota is normally attributed with establishing and also expressing the standard principles and methods of lean manufacturing back in the 1950s. Ever since, business in industries other than the automobile have actually efficiently applied lean manufacturing-reducing waste, enhancing production performance, enhancing quality, and ending up being extra receptive to customer need. However the pharmaceutical market has, for the most part, been dilatory in this regard.
Drug business have been unwillingly late in adopting and applying lean manufacturing strategies due to the fact that they are afraid that production solutions originating from the auto industry can’t actually be successfully applied to the special problems of the pharmaceutical industry. This fear both is and also is not warranted. And also the distinction usually comes down to making use of qualified lean manufacturing specialists with industry-specific knowledge and experience. Below’s an apt illustration from another sector that carefully parallels the final segment of medication manufacture.
In a short article titled “Lean Manufacturing for High-Speed Production” (AutomationWorld.com), Wes Iverson highlighted the necessity of using qualified consultants. Initially, he adduced some shocking stats: 25% of business that have applied this production (or 6 Sigma) procedure record “some development,” yet just a slim 2% report anything near exceptional results-which ways that virtually 75% fall somewhere in the failure range. This does not need to be the case, nonetheless.
Iverson then went on to give the example, drawn from Scott Watson’s, a specialist with E2M, Inc., discussion at the Load Expo Las Vegas 2009, a packaging-industry exhibition and also seminar. Iverson stated in his prefatory abstract that “blindly adhering to precepts is not likely to help those running high-speed product packaging lines, Watson informed the target market. While all of the traditional devices of this Production can be related to attain advantages on a high-speed line, the application of Lean concepts need to be equated to fit the production environment.” And also there is the take-away for medicine companies: that “the application of Lean ideas must be converted to fit the production setting” peculiar to pharmaceutical manufacturing.
Designers at a juice-bottling firm were “suggested by Toyota professionals to eliminate every one of the conveyors in between devices because traditional Lean principles brand name conveyors as excess and also unneeded,” a referral whose function was to promote “single-piece flow.” This recommendation was good theoretically, however it failed to take into consideration “the distinctions between auto Heavy Metal Spinning and product packaging, not just in the rate of the line, yet in the distinctions in products being made use of.” The product packaging products utilized in the bottling plant were “very variable, implying that regular stops [were] inevitable … much too often to stop the entire line for each and every event.”
So this manufacturing methods of “close-coupling” and also “single-piece flow” had to be adapted to the unique conditions of that specific high-speed packaging line. What needed to be added right into the production mix was an “proper quantity of build-up or barrier to fit the unpreventable ‘micro-stops,'” but not a lot that it amounted to throw away. Utilizing the right tools, consisting of total equipment efficiency (OEE) techniques and computer simulation, designers at the plant were able to customize and adapt lean techniques to make sure that execution at their plant achieved success.
Iverson summed it up by doing this: “In general, those aiming to release Lean in their plants must keep in mind the differences between their own procedures and also those of Toyota.” In a similar way, qualified lean production consultants with knowledge of as well as experience in the pharmaceutical sector can occasionally be the make-or-break active ingredient in an effective lean manufacturing execution for pharmaceutical firms.
