Challenges in Pharma Scheduling
Pharma manufacturing is one of the complex manufacturing industries when it comes to the manufacturing process and the operational constraints. It has similar processes that any process industry comes with but has additional Pharma specific complexities because of various regulations. So, Pharma manufacturing needs unique solutions to handle its unique constraints.
If you are a production planner, the following questions comes up daily in a production scheduling exercise.
Every production planner can answer the Level 1 set of questions using their in-house custom production scheduling software namely Spreadsheet. As we move on to the next level, the complexity and the constraints will increase and it takes considerable time and effort to answer these questions and by the time we have an answer, it becomes irrelevant. In practice, production planner must consider all the constraints to generate a feasible schedule which makes the scheduling exercise complex and time consuming. Below are some of the common internal and external challenges faced in Pharma Scheduling.
The variability in the shop floor is very high because of above challenges and without proper resource scheduling, efficiency of the resources will take a hit and order delays will be the common output of the plant. Spreadsheets works fine if the production scale is low in terms of number of batches. But, for an organization having the above listed challenges and if the questions raised are relevant, its time for them to re-look at the scheduling process.
Major outcome of an efficient scheduling exercise using an advanced scheduling system will be
1. Enhanced production capacity typically in the range of 15–25%
2. Batch cycle time reduction in the range of 10–40% based on the complexities.
3. Simplified and automated scheduling reducing manual exercise
4. Re-planning will be faster
