Simulation therapy saves Sanofi-aventis £1.4 million and transforms production
1 min read
Pharmaceuticals manufacturer Sanofi-aventis says it has now completed its Witness process simulation implementation at a major UK site, following phase one, which saved £1.4 million of inventory in six months.
The new system, from Lanner, is being used to optimise change in production methods at Sanofi-aventis' Fawdon site, with drug packaging shifting from 10kg boxes to 300kg mass containers.
Trevor Norman, continuous improvement manager at Sanofi-aventis, explains that the company needed to re-evaluate its existing production lines to understand the best approach to maximising production efficiency.
"The wholesale shift in material storage between the manufacturing and packaging processes required that we give serious consideration to how best to operate our production lines," says Norman.
"We have 11 lines in total, so knowing how to derive maximum benefit from production to include all variables around quantity, capacity and frequency of products, at any given time, required extra help.
"With the help of Lanner we simulated a virtual model of our production lines with the new production methods accounted for, and provided us with the data we needed to maximise production efficiency, which in turn reduced our inventory by a massive £1.4 million in the first six months alone."
