Pharmaceutical Industry goes Lean
Historically the Pharmaceutical Industry has concentrated on Research and Development, and Marketing. Manufacturing was regarded as merely complying with regulatory requirements. Moreover, the Pharmaceutical companies believed that Lean principles were not relevant to their environment. Batch reduction, flow optimization, built in quality, set up time reduction and process management were widely used in discrete manufacturing environments, but could not be implemented in a highly regulated process industry, such as the Pharmaceutical Industry.
Most analysts, including ourselves, can see a shift in thinking is needed in the
pharmaceutical business, due to global factors including:
- Increasing buyer driven pressure on pricing
- Increasing variability in demand
- Higher heterogeneity of customer preferences.
In addition, the pharmaceutical industry is a highly capital intensive business in terms of assets, and has a high working capital (WIP and Finished Goods).
Some of the top pharmaceutical companies have started working with the
KAIZEN Institute to gain a competitive advantage through their manufacturing
process, however the industry is still lagging behind with regard to Lean Thinking.
Our Customers
- Boehringer Ingelheim
- Sanofi Aventis
- Pfizer
- Schwarz
- Merck
- Unilabs
- Zydus Cadila
Publications and Case Studies
Case Study - Experiences with KMS / Lean Implementation in India |
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Case Study - Results in the Pharmaceutical Industry |
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KAIZEN Forum |
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Topics:
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