Every company wants to grow. However, growing your market share comes with the challenge of increasing production with the existing equipment to meet customer demand. A large pharmaceutical company in Brazil recently encountered this very challenge and turned to Lean Thinking to boost its production capacity. Their focus was to improve on-time delivery for a wide variety of materials and inputs at different points in the production process, in the face of limited space. For this company, growth brought logistical difficulties.
The situation presented itself as the common problem of making the well-known “seven rights” a reality in their internal supply logistics: delivering the right material, in the right place, at the right time, at the right cost, in the right quality, in the right quantity, and to the right person. They also had to deal with the many restrictions imposed on pharmaceutical companies by national and international legislation with regards to the occupation of spaces and the handling of materials in the production and storage areas.
At first the company invested in logistics automation, which required a major readjustment of the factory and actually had a negative impact on profitability. Seeking a simpler and more effective solution, the company decided to bring Lean Thinking (already in use on the manufacturing floor) in internal logistics, introducing just-in-time and a milk run (a system of delivery of materials to the point of use at takt time – only what’s necessary in a short production cycle is provided).
The implementation benefited from a strong interaction between the internal teams, leading to the creation of a road map that ultimately yielded the expected results. Lean was added to the traditional seven rights – service and logistical execution using the right method and tools, synthesized in the expression of “right-sized tool” used by Jim Womack and Dan Jones in their seminal book Lean Thinking.
Source: https://planet-lean.com/lean-logistics-pharmaceutical/