The Digital Imperative for Life Sciences Leaders 

Three Examples of Fast-Start Digital Manufacturing Projects

What keeps your operation leaders up at night?

As a business leader in your organization, you’d better know. Because when things aren’t working quite right in your manufacturing facilities, there are consequences -- for your products, your inventory turnover, and your bottom line.


What manufacturing problems can cause your team such heartburn? Most can be traced back to work processes that just don’t measure up to the demands of our digital age, issues such as manual data practices, siloed systems or a disconnected supply chain. Both industry experts and analysts agree that digital transformation is the way to break through blockers and pave the way for more efficient, effective processes.


What does digital transformation really mean?

Digital transformation can be an industry buzzword, but it’s very real -- a critical set of steps toward more efficient manufacturing. When we talk about digital transformation, we refer to advanced technologies that connect, collaborate, and automate processes to drive your business forward. Artificial intelligence, digital sensors, cloud computing and advanced analytics are just some of the new technologies. The result -- increased agility, faster time to market and cost reduction. It’s how you need to operate now.


93% of organizations say they are pursuing a digital business strategy. But less than one-quarter of them have reached the execution stage1.


Why? Life sciences executives face barriers in moving toward a future-state, a digitally transformed business. It’s no surprise that the larger the enterprise, the higher and more numerous the hurdles. They typically fall into four areas: strategy, prioritization, change management and resources, both financial and human capital. The most frequently cited barriers2 are:

  • Awaiting executive priorities to align
  • Too many technology choices (AI, AR, blockchain, etc.)
  • Waiting for change management consultant’s report
  • Difficulties or delays in changing operating model
  • Delayed results from a “digital readiness assessment”
  • Organizational or geographical silos
  • Legacy staff resistant to change and risk-averse due to perceived compliance and validation efforts
  • Shortage of digital talent needed to scale
  • Insufficient budget

How do you get started?


Despite the obstacles, tightly-scoped projects can have immediate payback, up to a 30% return on invested capital within a calendar year. They can also stimulate the organization to tear down barriers and move forward more quickly with broader digital plans. Conservative but effective projects can begin moving the enterprise beyond continuous improvement to true digital step-change.


Here are three examples of fast-start digital manufacturing projects that deliver real benefits rapidly and can jump-start the digital journey for a life sciences manufacturer.


CS_SocialPosts_Althea.jpg#1 Digital inventory management
Automate material management and warehousing

Challenge
When systems like material planning, inventory management and warehousing execution are disconnected, an organization may have to resort to costly practices like buffer and safety stock to hedge against supply shortages. Even then, life sciences manufacturers remain prone to outages when they have information barriers caused by poor integration between planning and operations.

Solution
Automation that coordinates the delivery of component material, identifies and tracks material consumed and prints digital labels for finished goods is a perfect example of a fast ROI digital project. It’s also one that has become essential to agile manufacturing. A practical digital approach also includes a data collection system and dashboard that has a live view of supply, demand and inventory. Learn more about Automation Solutions.

Results
The result is total inventory visibility from inbound receipt to manufacturing, to work-in-progress and shipment tracking, with data-driven label printing at every step.


With modern out-of-the-box scanning, ERP and supply chain applications, a manufacturer can quickly adapt to customer changes. Warehouse managers report a 30% improvement in labor efficiency and space utilization due to business rules that guide forklift drivers directly to the smartest put-away location or guide them along an optimized pick-path. Constantly tracking warehouse tasks gives full visibility of the current workload, along with historical views of user delivery performance.

While operational improvements and savings in materials management provide baseline benefits, inventory visibility is also critical to the expanding need for traceability and product genealogy, helping to ensure successful production and compliance across the value chain.


⌈ “With QAD Automation Solutions we now have reliable data and the ability to better serve our customers.” -  Winai Yampochai - General Manager, Finance & Accounting, Akebono ⌋

View Case Study



04.15.2021.png#2 Built-in quality
A data-driven approach to enterprise quality management

Challenge
Often, a life sciences organization has too many disjointed systems supporting manufacturing quality, with a patchwork of temporary fixes that have evolved since its startup days. When the quality operations and planning functions only communicate via manual processes like phone calls and spreadsheets, there can be inefficiencies in quality processes and data sharing.

Solution
For a more integrated, manufacturing approach, embed quality practices into your manufacturing processes, tying a digital thread between new product introductions and end product deliveries. Bring in a quality planning system that makes quality a part of your everyday processes and manages audit activities to surface defects early. Plant personnel can shift away from an “inspect everything” approach and gain useful insights that strengthen product design. Learn more about Enterprise Quality Management.

Results
This approach typically results in a 10-20% reduction in overall inspection costs. Better planning in the early phases of NPI can reduce the rate of nonconformance issues by 10-25% by eliminating repeat issues. In addition, the automatic collection of quality data provides visibility across the quality process both within the company and with suppliers. Analysis of this information allows companies to gain insights into trends, to assess risks and drive continuous improvements by modeling the impact on the enterprise.

A more digitized approach to quality planning and quality operations significantly reduces manual effort across the organization, drives true root cause analysis and transitions quality efforts from a perceived burden to a strategic initiative.

⌈ “We have realized a lot of benefits with QAD EQMS, we are saving money because we’ve been able to reduce the number of man-hours spent on manual production and maintenance tracking by our quality control team by 50%. The greatest benefits have come with automation, efficient consolidation and transparency.” -  Sherry Campbell, Quality Systems, Saft ⌋


Noble Bio.png#3 Real-time production insight
Augmenting production execution capabilities with rich data from ERP

Challenge
Production and planning meetings used to involve spreadsheets from each team, so it's no surprise that the results lacked operational insights and interfered with business decisions. The process also predicted poor results like waning customer satisfaction and ineffective inventory management.

Solution
Production execution solutions use widely available shop floor interfaces that capture IoT-class data to deliver production-level insights. They allow manufacturers to directly tie ERP and shop floor operational data and processes together to manage shop floor activities in real-time. They provide the production insights needed to rapidly respond to unplanned inventory shortages, equipment failures and productivity slowdowns. Learn more about Production Execution.

Results
When you deploy a truly integrated operational extension of the ERP planning system, both the plant and the planning function benefit. The approach is based on rapid information sharing, with released orders promptly made available to the plant, and progress against those orders immediately available to the planners. The plant has a deeper understanding of the most current business priorities, and the planning function has the ability to adapt to the inevitable changes on the plant floor and rapidly respond to customer requirements.

This solution replaces a myriad of manual data collection systems and complex, rigid interfaces to manufacturing solutions. Industry reports indicate that this approach results in a greater than 20% increase in on-time shipments and that over 80% of these systems pay for themselves in under a year.

⌈ “Another benefit is the enhanced capture of production data from the plant floor through the implementation of QAD Production Execution. We address every step of our operating process and as a result, we now have real-time data reported at every step of the operations. It's eliminated some of the manual tracking in other systems as well.” -  Noble Biomaterials ⌋


Conclusion

The digital projects listed here all offer significant and measurable near-term ROI, and can all be accomplished in months. They are true digital manufacturing projects that support business strategy and adaptive manufacturing imperatives.

Traditional tactics, processes and systems often hinder a company’s ability to rapidly respond to change and keep or gain a competitive advantage. Life science manufacturers face an increasingly unpredictable and turbulent world that requires continuous and rapid iteration of their game plan to maintain competitive advantages. Those that adopt adaptive digital strategies can more rapidly respond to, and even plan for, increasing disruptions to their business.

We call manufacturers that are able to innovate and change business models rapidly Adaptive Manufacturing Enterprises.


1 “The Drive to Transform Powers a More Inclusive Buying Dynamic,” IDG, 2019
2 “Digital Transformation Survey: 2019,” Wipro Digital, 2019

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