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Pharmaceutical Industry: Lean Lab

Capability

Operational Improvement

Client

A global pharmaceutical company with a major presence in the U.S. and products that include solid dose, capsules, liquids, and nasals, both branded and generics

Problem

To maintain competitiveness, the manufacturer needed to cut per-unit costs by 20% by making their operations faster and leaner, including making the laboratory more responsive and shrinking its throughput time with no compromise in quality or safety. The company’s large number and variety of products created significant complexity in the queuing, coordinating, and conducting of tests, which resulted in high throughput time, high levels of work in progress, low productivity, low responsiveness, and high costs.

Approach

Working with Tunnell and employing Lean Lab principles, a team that included representatives from manufacturing, QA/QC, packaging, and planning & scheduling designed and implemented a new way of working that would:

• Minimize non-value added activities
• Reduce throughput time
• Reduce unit costs. 
• Align QC and Manufacturing by focusing on information and material flow
• Dedicate resources to create standard work and define standard roles for analysts
• Identify key performance indicators to support daily analyst performance reviews

Results

Results included:

• Throughput time dropped from 15 days to 8, an improvement of 53%
• The percentage of time that personnel spend in value-adding activities climbed from 75% to 90%
• The percentage of right-first-time testing climbed from 95% to 98%
• The number of samples released by the Lab went from 20 per week to 30

In addition, Tunnell’s collaborative way of working transferred knowledge to the client team, enabling them to continuously improve Lab operations.

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