The company
Alfasigma is one of the top 5 players in the pharmaceutical industry in Italy, with a turnover that reached nearly 1 billion euros in 2020. The company has three production sites in central and southern Italy. At the Alanno site in Abruzzo, where the intervention took place, more than 300 people work. The plant is divided into 11 departments housed in 7 buildings, with the site’s production capacity being: 73 million packages and raw materials exported worldwide; 248 million injectable liquids produced each year; 37 million sterile powders produced annually; 9 million non-sterile packs produced annually.
The Challenge
In a highly competitive scenario and as part of a broader process of digitization towards Industry 4.0 models, the company chose to invest in a project to review the planning and production monitoring process, with specific needs:
- Introduce a more precise MES system for data recording and easier to use
- Introduce a planning system capable of providing a production schedule compatible with the specific needs of the sector
- Introduce a scheduling system capable of providing a scheduled plan that considers the main constraints of the sector
- Digitize and improve machine and plant maintenance
- Digitize paper documentation
Solution
The introduction of Compass at ALFASIGMA was aligned with the strategy of process digitization, and the software implemented in production is used to:
- Coordinate maintenance response times with production downtime in complex production environments. Interface with production lines to obtain objective data
- Have timely and reliable statistics on the main performance indicators (KPIs) of the production process
- Eliminate paper documentation in production (e.g., setup instructions, safety procedures, assembly instructions, etc.)
- Develop the production schedule with production proposals proportional to batch size, availability clearing per batch based on a FEFO logic, start-end validity dates for components in the bill of materials, stock vs. MTO (contract manufacturing)
- Obtain a scheduled plan considering the constraints: the need to avoid contaminating departments with different active ingredients at the same time; manage end-of-batch and end-of-campaign cleaning; handle complex setup matrices; sequence items with similar characteristics; manage production calendars and maintenance interventions.
Results
Compass at ALFASIGMA allowed for:
- Reducing time dedicated to planning
- Providing visibility of a long-term plan with identification of critical issues
- Monitoring real-time progress of the production lines from any workstation
- Improving stock management
- Monitoring production KPIs
- Improving coordination between departments
- Collecting objective and reliable data on production progress
