On-Demand Webinar: A Case Study in Efficiency Optimization through MES

Like many large-scale manufacturers, when building their new production facility as part of a client contract, Contract Pharmacal Corp. (CPC) designed the plant to operate using minimal manpower. This worked out to be about four operators working on each of the eight lines. However, as part of their contract, they were required to provide their client with insight into line capacity and production efficiency, a difficult task to do manually given the minimal staff they planned to have working the production lines.

To provide the necessary manufacturer-to-customer transparency and optimize operations, CPC turned to ACE to help design and implement a manufacturing execution system (MES) using the Parsec TrakSYS platform. The challenges CPC brought to ACE that they needed to address with this new system included the following: 

• Lack of high-visibility real-time production data measurable by the hour
• Minimal insight into the causes of downtime and factors affecting overall equipment effectiveness (OEE)
• Accurate reporting of equipment conditions and specific triggers of machine stoppages
• Communication barriers between operators and the maintenance staff and engineering group
• Lack of transparency between shifts, especially from the second shift to the first shift
• Establishing targets and a path toward targeted production
• Identifying real-time correlation between line progress and production plan timelines

With the new ACE-developed TrakSYS-based MES, CPC said it has helped them learn how to best operate their plant and achieve the following results:

• Charted a path towards increasing yield by around 3 percent, which is a significant number when batches consist of about 10 million doses
• Reduced changeover times from an average of 3,600 hours to an average of 1,200 hours per year
• Established a common language for conveying data between people, groups, shifts, and management.
• Analyzed data patterns to create a handbook of 20+ maintenance reference guides to addresses common problems quickly

As a result of these improvements, CPC saw productivity increase from 3 to 16 percent per line, which means an additional 47 million doses can be produced annually.

To hear more details about how we collaborated with CPC to create this solution and learn how a similar MES solution could be deployed in your organization, view the on-demand version of our live webinar where we discuss the details of this solution with Parsec and CPC.