The replacement of paper-based processing administration systems with MES software can help increase efficiency by automating and managing a range of production processes, but according to LZ Lifescience the cost of such systems has restricted their use to the larger firms within the pharma industry.
“Smaller drug product or medical device makers have been excluded from using MES and have tended to scale their workforce to match production requirements, which means that increased production comes with increased overhead,” Christian Fortunel, who has just been hired to run the company’s US operations, told in-Pharmatechnologist.com.
“The platforms that have traditionally been deployed in ‘big pharma’ were designed for general industry and often continuous processes - including oil and gas, bulk chemicals - and not with life science processes in mind.”
He estimated that less than a third of approximately 75 MES vendors see more than 5% of their revenues come from the pharma industry, and these systems are not sector specific.
Therefore, the Dublin, Ireland-headquartered software firm has just launched an edition of its Shopfloor-Online MES to targeting the life science sector, which it says “significantly reduces the pricing barriers” which have until now kept small drugmakers from using such systems.
“Both large and small organisations can benefit and stay in the competitive race with this next generation, web technology based, simple, modular, and flexible system that already contains the building blocks and core functionality for life science manufacturing,” said Fortunel.
The software allows firms to simultaneously manage scheduling, production execution, workflow, quality and inventory, and could lead to dramatic increases in productivity, he continued.
“We calculate that it is possible to achieve gains of more than 25% in productivity, as well as reduce the time and stress associated with managing manufacturing using paper and hybrid systems.”