by Kelsey H | Jan 24, 2023 | Industry News, Process Improvement
After years of record growth in the industry, pharmaceutical manufacturers still aren’t slowing down. Recently, several of the world’s largest biopharmaceutical companies announced plans to invest in the expansion of some of their current manufacturing sites. In December, Pfizer committed to investing billions into their plants in Ireland, Belgium, and Michigan to expand production capacity, cold storage, and packaging. Bayer also broke ground on a $43.6 million extension of the packaging and production areas in their Myerstown, Pa. plant last month.
For some of these projects, the companies are spending as much money to expand their existing site as they would to build an entirely new facility. If they’re making such a significant investment, why choose expansion over building a brand-new site? While it may seem like a new plant would present the most advantages, adding onto a current successful site can be just as, if not more, beneficial.
An Existing Labor Base
One advantage an existing site offers over a new build is an already-skilled workforce. Though an expansion will likely require more employees, your company’s existing presence will make it easier to hire more qualified team members. The community will already be familiar with your business, and you’ll have your experienced employees on board to quickly train the new hires. When you open a new plant, you have to hire and train a completely new workforce in an unfamiliar area – a task that can be especially challenging given the manufacturing industry’s ongoing staffing shortage.
Simple Logistics
When manufacturers decide to build a new site, oftentimes their primary goal is to create more production capacity for a particular product. However, for companies trying to expand an existing product line, it can be more efficient to add an extension to a site that already produces the line. Taking this approach simplifies several logistical factors. For one, you can build upon the equipment and processes that already exist at the site, rather than replicating them from scratch in a new facility. Additionally, other precursors needed to begin production, such as storage requirements and a supply chain for raw materials, will already be in place. Adding square footage to your already-functional facility can save your company several steps and get the added production up and running more quickly.
Future Flexibility
In addition to simplifying logistics, creating one larger production site can also allow for more flexibility with the plant’s layout and potential reconfigurations. The added square footage will give you the space needed to address other, non-capacity-related improvements. With the opportunity to rearrange equipment or implement process changes, your site can produce added output and revenue, in addition to the increased capacity. If your production is split up among several smaller individual sites, each one is more limited in the space it has to reconfigure the layout.
An Extensive Database
One of the most important benefits of expanding an existing manufacturing site is the access to years of valuable data already gathered about the plant. Through the programs the site uses for operations, you could have years or decades of information regarding the most efficient or profitable ways to run production. This knowledge will help decision-makers make the best and most strategic choices about how to expand capacity in a way that maximizes the return on the investment. The data may be helpful when building a new plant, too, but there are always slightly different variables that are hard to account for in a new, separate facility.
If you aren’t able to sort through your data to make better-informed investment decisions, you may need to utilize a capacity analysis tool like VirtECS®. VirtECS® can create a virtual model of your unique plant configuration and analyze the best way for your site to add capacity or maximize throughput. For more information about how VirtECS® harnesses data to optimize your planning capabilities, download our short guide here.
by Kelsey H | Jan 4, 2023 | Industry News, Planning & Scheduling
As a major biologics manufacturing site was considering options to optimize their planning and scheduling processes, their top priority was to find a tool that was incredibly flexible and could accurately predict the outcome of different complex scenarios. Their existing planning and scheduling processes, which were performed in MS Projects and Excel, were rigid and unable to account for nuances or constraints.
To find a new solution, the biologics plant interviewed six different vendors before selecting VirtECS® as their optimization tool of choice. While the other software options were very structured with pre-set layouts, VirtECS® could adapt to the site’s unique design. The way VirtECS® quickly adjusts to evaluate new scenarios helped it immediately stand out from the alternatives. Ultimately, the ability to change conditions or add constraints at any time became a major selling point. “That’s what really sold this site on VirtECS®,” said Eileen Van Wonterghem, Project Manager at Advanced Process Combinatorics, Inc. “They could see how our tool responded to the fake scenario in a way that was much more agile than their current abilities in MS Projects.”
Despite their excitement about finding a more flexible solution, the client was still concerned about how the tool would handle a production process that is as complicated and challenging as biologics. “At the time, we hadn’t yet encountered many of the constraints this site was dealing with,” said Van Wonterghem. “We worked closely with our client to model their biologics products in a wide variety of ways, which allowed us to enhance VirtECS® in the process.” By collaborating with the company’s scheduling and planning team, APCI could expand the VirtECS® framework and identify countless ways to meet the plant’s changing scheduling needs.
A Well-Oiled Implementation Process
To integrate VirtECS® into the site’s processes, APCI experts continued to work hand-in-hand with the client’s modeling team to customize the tool. Throughout the setup process, they recorded data and documented which areas of the plant were the most difficult to schedule. To combat those challenges, APCI added even more detail to the virtual plant model. The site could then run potential scenarios until they found the most efficient plan. If they had a request for a sequence they wanted to test that wasn’t yet possible within the model, APCI’s team worked continuously to evolve the tool and expand its capabilities.
This particular site was among the fastest to master the full capabilities of VirtECS®, and much of that was due to their internal training processes. To speed up implementation, the client took the initiative to designate one main point of contact who learned to use VirtECS® inside and out. Once they felt confident using the tool, the contact then trained the rest of their team, passing along important information or updates about new features when they became available. APCI experts were in contact with the team almost daily, which helped us accomplish their needs promptly. “Throughout the project, we were as flexible as we could be to provide our client with support,” said Van Wonterghem. “We’re always happy to collaborate and work together with our clients to make sure they reach their goals.”
How VirtECS® Contributed to Smarter Decisions & Smoother Communication
As soon as the VirtECS® virtual model accurately reflected the physical plant and the team could navigate the tool effectively, our client immediately started to reap the value. VirtECS® allowed their team to track variables that were otherwise untrackable and gain deeper insights than they ever had the time or manpower to discover. Using this extensive scenario analysis from VirtECS®, the site could start making better planning and scheduling decisions regarding plant investments and process improvements. “With VirtECS® bottleneck analysis, our client was able to see new perspectives and test changes to their plant configuration,” said Van Wonterghem. “They could measure the outcome of each potential scenario and decide if they should make a new investment or rearrange their current resources.” Using VirtECS® to analyze and solve bottlenecks also helped the site improve their run rate and discover ways to add new products to the schedule without disrupting current orders.
Perhaps one of the biggest and most unexpected sources of value for this site came from VirtECS® Symphony, a web-based solution that distributes published schedules across the plant within seconds. “Symphony brought this site much faster communication and reaction times in regard to changes on the floor,” said Van Wonterghem. “Before Symphony, operators would share updates during meetings at the start of each shift. Now, anyone can pull current information from Symphony at any time.” VirtECS® Symphony also strengthened the team’s tracking abilities, helping them follow production progress in real time and prepare for new tasks in advance.
VirtECS®’ Continued Impact
Powered by VirtECS®’ solutions, our client has been able to achieve many of the organizational objectives that inspired them to seek an optimization tool in the first place. We’ve helped them eliminate time-consuming manual processes, remove inefficiencies, and make more strategic decisions based on better reporting. Ultimately, our client found enough value from VirtECS® that they have continued to initiate new projects and imagine new applications of the tool for this site and others. Through our ongoing work, we’ve helped this biologics company remove variability in their processes and deliver important information to operators more quickly with fewer mistakes. “Much of this team’s success with VirtECS® has been driven by its end users making comprehensive use of the tool and figuring out how it could make their lives even better,” said Van Wonterghem.
This project not only benefited our client, but it also helped our internal team expand their knowledge and improve VirtECS® as a whole. Our work with the individuals at this plant helped us learn best implementation practices and adopt recommendations that we now give to all our clients. Additionally, we learned that VirtECS® Symphony was even more valuable than we first realized. The ability for operators to communicate about schedule changes instantly proved to be so beneficial for this site that we now recommend VirtECS® Symphony for every client we work with.
Over the years, we’ve continued to work with this biologics client on implementing VirtECS® at many of its other manufacturing sites, resulting in an incredibly thorough and powerful tool that could improve processes at any plant in the industry. “By now, we have input nearly every possible drug substance process or constraint into VirtECS®,” said Van Wonterghem. “The tool has become so comprehensive, we believe it has near ubiquitous use within the biologics industry.”
by Kelsey H | Nov 8, 2022 | Industry News, Supply Chain
It’s no secret that manufacturers have been rethinking their supply chains in recent years. Many reports indicated US companies were considering a manufacturing move, and this year, businesses were ready to take action. According to recent data from UBS, a staggering 80% of executives at American companies have plans to move their manufacturing out of China and reshore some or all of it back to the US.
Why are so many businesses bringing production back to the US? Why now? Is the country prepared to handle the influx of work, and how can manufacturers work around potential roadblocks? We’ll discuss all these questions and more below.
China’s Problems
For the last four years, China has suffered a series of setbacks that caused waves of US businesses to move manufacturing out of the country. It started back in 2018, when former President Trump imposed tariffs on many imported Chinese products that are still ongoing today. Then two years later, pandemic-related production delays and rising shipping costs further saddles Chinese manufacturing sites with inconveniences. Lower costs were the primary motivation for companies to outsource manufacturing to China; with rising prices, that advantage disappeared.
With manufacturers eager to move out of China, it naturally raises the question of where they should relocate to. For American companies, the resounding answer has been back to the continental US. Why are so many manufacturers choosing to onshore production, rather than move to other Asian countries or international sites?
Technology & Automation
The US may not seem like an obvious choice to relocate production sites at first, given its strict regulations and an expensive, shrinking labor market. However, the US is also a global center of technological innovation, and the increased use of automated systems has curtailed the need for mass amounts of labor. In areas of the world where labor is less expensive, they haven’t had the need to develop automated processes to take the place of human labor. In countries like the US, though, thousands of unfilled manufacturing jobs exacerbated the demand for artificial intelligence-backed advancements.
For many plants, those advancements have led to implementing robotics and automated machines. Data from Reuters revealed that US manufacturers implemented more robots into their processes in 2021 than any other year in history. According to MIT, plants that utilize robotics often see increased productivity, as well as improved wages and job satisfaction among the employees they do have. If your business is willing to invest in technology for your plants, you may be ultimately unphased by labor shortages, and even come out more profitable than before.
Advantages of Keeping Production Closer to Consumers
In addition to technology-related advantages, the US also offers close proximity to many American companies’ primary customer base. International shipping can often result in unexpected delays and unpredictable schedules, so having a domestic supply chain can ensure customers find products in stock and receive their orders on time. According to research from McKinsey, if the product a consumer needs is out of stock, 39% will select a different brand or product rather than wait for their usual item to come back in stock.
There can also be internal benefits to keeping production close to your consumers. Some consumers place a high value on brands that support the local economy, so choosing to add manufacturing and new jobs in the US will make your company attractive to certain customers. Such measures may also coincide with some of your company’s larger brand promises, such as those related to sustainability or community involvement. For businesses who specifically produce semiconductor chips, President Biden has also offered a 25% tax credit and other financial incentives to those who build new plants within the US.
Ways to Offset Higher Costs for US Sites
These are just some of the reasons manufacturers are flocking back to the US. However, if your company is still concerned about heightened expenses related to onshoring production, know there are several other strategies that can make a domestic supply chain feasible. For example, if building a new plant seems daunting, but you already have one or more US sites, consider adding capacity to the structure. By adding on to a current plant or acquiring another existing site, you can still meet production needs without investing as much upfront.
Planning and scheduling optimization is another area that can provide significant savings and increased profitability. When based on a highly detailed virtual plant model, an optimization tool can help your site navigate inventory, product demands, and maintenance to find the most efficient production schedule. It can also analyze your site’s layout to determine how you can maximize capacity to get the most output possible. To learn more about our advanced planning, scheduling, and optimization tool, VirtECS, we invite you to download our short overview guide.
by Kelsey H | Aug 9, 2022 | Industry News, Planning & Scheduling
The digital twin, or virtual model of a physical process, is one of the biggest buzzwords in the business world right now. It has also become one of the most desired investments. According to IBM, the market for digital twin software is worth more than $3 billion as of 2020 and will continue to skyrocket until at least 2026, when it’s projected to be worth $48 billion.
Digital twin software is incredibly valuable to manufacturing plants in particular because the tool provides an in-depth virtual look at production processes and gathers data on the plant’s performance. Using this data, business leaders can test potential operational scenarios and study every detail of their processes from several angles.
One of the digital twin’s most notable achievements is the ability to give organizations a comprehensive look into the past, present, and future. It can use past performance to predict future issues or achievements, while also alerting you to current conditions in the plant. This kind of thorough reporting can give businesses the insight they need to make strategic decisions, address weaknesses, and even boost revenue.
The Past
To build an accurate model, the foundation of any manufacturing plant’s digital twin must be past production data. This should include quantifiable information on how each of your plant’s systems and machines operate, such as their average output and run time. It’s important to give the digital twin as much access to historical data as possible. This will help the model learn how your facility has typically operated up to this point so it can begin analyzing points of improvement and overlooked issues. Over time, as new data is continually gathered from current operations, the digital twin will keep an ongoing log of past performance that it can reference at any time.
The Present
In addition to analyzing past data, digital twin software will also process new information in real time from each point in your supply chain. As we mentioned earlier, this data will build on a historical log that forms the foundation that the software will use to predict achievements or disruptions moving forward. However, the digital twin will also use incoming information to provide engineers and operators with updated, real-world circumstances, which employees can utilize to recognize delays or potential production problems much sooner than they could otherwise. Additionally, they can use the digital twin to tweak production in real time to optimize efficiency and total output.
The Future
Thanks to the data gathered about both past and present plant performance, digital twins can then create a complex algorithm that predicts how the plant will perform in the future under a wide variety of circumstances. For example, if there’s a projected shortage of one raw material, the digital twin can test how plant processes will respond to different strategies for addressing the shortage. With this information, business leaders can make informed decisions on how to minimize disruptions and maintain plant output. For further testing, engineers can also use the model to test how plant performance will change with added investments, such as more employees or new equipment. On the opposite side, a digital twin can help predict when equipment or products should be retired or replaced in favor of more effective or profitable alternatives.
VirtECS® is a powerful process modeling and digital twin tool that can store and analyze in-depth plant parameters, including yields, rates, setup times, and process vessels. VirtECS® can then rapidly use the past and present data collected to explore future scenarios or potential process options to determine how the plant can optimize output. If you’re interested in learning more about digital twin analysis and the capabilities of VirtECS® in particular, download our short guide here.
by Kelsey H | Jun 21, 2022 | Industry News
The employee landscape of manufacturing businesses is changing. During the height of the pandemic, uncertainty drove many employees to accelerate their plans to leave the workforce. In the third quarter of 2020, 3.2 million more Baby Boomers retired than in the same period of 2019. Many of these employees were in management positions, leaving an open opportunity for younger Gen Xers and Millennials to take their place – if manufacturers can attract them.
Though the industry has struggled to secure young workers in recent years, this new, innovative, and tech-savvy generation of leaders has the potential to positively impact manufacturing organizations. They may be more likely to take charge of technological improvements and provide a fresh perspective to previously unseen issues. Keep reading to learn more about manufacturers’ opportunity to tap into the next generation of leaders.
Improved Digital Communication
Gen Xers and Millennials have spent their entire professional lives using digital media. That’s good news, because 38% of manufacturers have started accelerating their digitalization plans as a result of the pandemic, according to McKinsey. Young leaders who are well-versed in technology will be an important resource as more companies move to convert manual processes to more automated models. With their wealth of experience, these employees can advocate for and initiate technology updates that will improve your manufacturing processes.
To tap into their expertise, task your new potential leaders to research and recommend tools that will better connect people across departments, plants, or hybrid work models. They know that modern communication tools for large organizations should integrate with other internal processes and be accessible from existing employee devices. Your budding new leaders can help ensure whichever new system you choose is easy to learn and encourages collaboration across the company.
Responsible Use of Data
However, increased digitization can also bring an elevated risk for cybersecurity threats. New high-tech systems and machines introduce more opportunities for hackers and irresponsible data use. According to IBM, 47% of attacks on manufacturing in 2021 were due to vulnerabilities that had not yet been addressed. In 2017, Renault-Nissan was infamously attacked with ransomware, resulting in production halts at five plants and up to $4 billion in estimated losses. Without knowledgeable leaders and thorough plans in place to address all potential problem areas, your organization may be left at risk.
Of course, your IT and cybersecurity team should be the first people you look to for guidance on cybersecurity, but young manufacturing leaders can also help lead the charge. These leaders can guide their own teams toward more responsible use of data and analytics on a daily basis. Additionally, they can take on the challenge of training the wider workforce on best technology practices and defensive tactics to help prevent an attack.
Implement More Advanced Tools
Many manufacturers have used tools like Excel for their planning and scheduling needs for years, simply because that’s the way it’s always been done. Under the right circumstances, Excel can still be an incredibly useful tool. However, with so much advanced technology available now, Excel is rarely the most efficient planning and scheduling option for complex manufacturers.
Ushering in a new generation of innovative leaders provides an opportunity to implement new, effective tools that provide much-needed improvements to plant operations. Thanks to their decades of familiarity with digital tools, your new leaders can help identify which alternatives will provide the most benefit. Advanced planning software can reduce the need for time-consuming and error-prone manual effort, putting your organization on the path toward optimization and increased throughput.
VirtECS® is an example of a sophisticated planning, scheduling and capacity analysis tool. Our software has been used by dozens of global manufacturers in the last 30 years to manage their supply chain and make better planning decisions. For more information on the benefits VirtECS® brings to manufacturers and the implementation process, please download our overview guide.
by Kelsey H | Mar 22, 2022 | Industry News
So, have you heard much about the ongoing supply chain issues in the manufacturing industry?
In all seriousness, pandemic-related shutdowns, rising shipping prices, and fluctuating trade agreements have all wreaked havoc on the US supply chain, which has affected companies’ ability to provide the products consumers need. For years, US companies have outsourced manufacturing of key parts to countries overseas, where they could get large volumes and a low price. However, due to the significant delays and struggles to find freight (let alone affordable freight), businesses have started to prioritize control over low costs.
As a result, some of the largest American companies have started to reshore their manufacturing sites in hopes of regaining control and security over their own processes. As these organizations pave the way, we expect more domestic manufacturers to follow suit in the months to come – especially because struggles with overseas plants have already been going on for years.
The Trade War
This shift to bring manufacturing back to the US has been in process for years. In 2018, President Trump introduced tariffs on $50 billion of product from China and other countries in hopes of encouraging American companies to keep their business in the US. Though the tariff rate was reduced in 2020, they have remained in place until China meets its goal of increasing its US purchases by $200 billion.
President Biden has recently echoed the need to bring manufacturing back to the US, particularly in light of the semiconductor chip shortage that left Americans in short supply of goods like cars and electronics. The shortage has not only resulted in low inventories of essential products, but also increased their prices and slowed overall US economic recovery. Biden subsequently encouraged Congress to pass legislation that would provide up to $52 billion in subsidies to companies who invest in semiconductor manufacturing within the US.
Manufacturers Begin the Reshoring Process
Even before a semiconductor manufacturing bill passed through Congress last month, some of the country’s largest manufacturers had already taken semiconductor chip manufacturing into their own hands. Earlier this year, Intel announced plans to invest $20 billion into a semiconductor chip plant in Ohio, while Samsung plans to build a $17 billion plant in Texas. Similarly, GM and Toyota have both invested billions into electronic battery production in the US, products that have typically been manufactured overseas. According to Toyota’s Group Vice President for Enterprise Strategy, bringing semiconductor production back to the US is a “big endeavor, but it’s the future.”
As construction for the new plants are set to kick off in the coming year, these facilities have an opportunity to ensure that their processes are fully optimized and highly efficient from the beginning. If the goal is to prevent future shortages and backups, companies must put in safeguards against other potential delays that could impact production. A planning, scheduling, and capacity analysis tool like VirtECS can identify the most beneficial investments, maximize throughput, and increase overall production capacity in a new plant. Implementing VirtECS from the beginning will help production start smoothly and avoid time-consuming changes down the line. If you’re interested in learning more about the benefits of using VirtECS in your organization, one of our experts would love to chat with you about your plant’s unique challenges and needs.