by admin | Nov 20, 2023 | Planning & Scheduling, Process Improvement
This presentation will discuss a unique and practical learning framework – VirtECS (Virtually Exhaustive Combinatorial System) – to rapidly (1) enable a high-fidelity model of bioprocessing and (2) search the many possible process schedules to find a high-performance way to operate. VirtECS improves capital efficiency, drives throughput increases, and promotes cost reduction. VirtECS can be used to establish manufacturing social media that promotes continuous improvement, complexity mitigation, and teamwork.
by Kelsey H | Oct 17, 2023 | Planning & Scheduling
Pharmaceutical companies have seen significant growth in revenue since 2020. For these future-thinking companies, it is important to reinvest funds into their facilities to add resources and new capabilities to fuel continued innovation. Currently, Goldman Sachs estimates that the global pharmaceutical industry could see up to $700 billion in acquisitions and investments in the coming years.
In recent months, many of the world’s largest pharmaceutical manufacturers announced investments into expanding production or improving their facilities. Denmark-based Novo Nordisk has begun investing $2.3 billion to expand capacity at their plant in Hillerød. Novartis, based out of Switzerland, plans to invest $300 million into operations at several of their European sites to support their push into biologics medicines. In the US, Eli Lilly will spend $450 million to increase production of diabetes medicine in North Carolina, while also adding $1.6 billion to their site in Indiana.
When spending millions or even billions of dollars, even small optimizations can lead to significant financial gains for pharmaceutical manufacturers. Keep reading to discover how digital twin technology can optimize plant expansion investments to add flexibility and increase efficiency.
Optimizing Investment for Flexible Future Circumstances
For most companies, the overarching goal of major capital investments is to increase production to meet consumer demand or add the ability to produce new products. These projects may take years to come to fruition, and as such, they are often subject to change based on market conditions.
To account for variable conditions, the shrewdest investment strategies allow for flexibility within the facility. When investing in a site expansion, the added capacity should be designed to adapt to new processes, technologies, or product portfolios that become a priority in the future. This method allows organizations to pivot quickly to follow changes to consumer demand or adjust to take on production for new medicines without additional added capacity.
With a powerful virtual model, also known as a digital twin, plants can test and evaluate different potential layouts to identify which will provide them with the most flexibility. Because the digital twin is an exact copy of the site’s unique parameters, the planning and scheduling team can digitally add pieces of equipment, production lines, and processes to simulate a real manufacturing run. The tool can then run many simulations at once to, allowing the site to see how flexible the proposed layout may be and ultimately identify the most efficient investment solution.
Using Plant Expansion to Increase Efficiency
In addition to adding flexibility and overall capacity, investments into manufacturing facilities also present an opportunity for companies to increase production efficiency and generally get the most value possible from each investment dollar. As noted in Eli Lilly’s press release announcing their plant expansion, these investments are not only about improving business operations; they are also essential to helping more patients access the medicines they need. Often, achieving that goal comes down to optimizing resource allocation to achieve the best run rate with the added capacity sites.
After more than 30 years in the industry, we’ve found that using a digital twin like VirtECS is the most reliable and effective way to optimize resources. With the data VirtECS collects, the software can quickly analyze past and future manufacturing runs to identify every possible opportunity to maximize output with the given number of equipment and raw material. Sites can test potential changes to each step of the production process to find where additional investment may have the biggest impact, and where the effects could be limited. To learn more about VirtECS’ digital twin capabilities, download our short guide here.
by Kelsey H | Aug 15, 2023 | Planning & Scheduling
VirtECS and SchedulePro from Intelligen are two of the leading providers of planning, scheduling, and modeling services. These advanced tools address similar challenges that many manufacturers face in optimizing their processes and maximizing output.
However, VirtECS and SchedulePro are founded in distinctly different forms of technology. As a result, they offer several different features and benefits. To help your organization decide which tool may best suit your facility’s planning, scheduling, and modeling needs, we’re breaking down the biggest differences between VirtECS and SchedulePro.
Planning & Scheduling
At their core, VirtECS and SchedulePro are both manufacturing planning and scheduling programs, which means they can perform the same basic actions. Both offer the ability to schedule production activities, update the activity status, and publish the finished schedule to a webpage. They can also generate a sequential recipe of steps needed to complete a product batch.
However, there are several features that enhance the planning and scheduling process that only VirtECS can provide. For example, VirtECS offers the option to include maintenance activities in the schedule, which helps coordinate regular production activities around necessary downtime to prevent equipment breakdowns. With VirtECS, plants can also include their product changeover activities, optimize their solution prep scheduling, and account for level-loading of solutions preps within the schedule. These additional features help VirtECS create a more comprehensive schedule for the entire plant, which makes it an especially attractive option for plants in the highly complex pharmaceutical industry.
Modeling & Analysis
VirtECS and SchedulePro are both powerful tools when it comes to their modeling and analysis capabilities. Both programs will create a virtual model of your plant and quantitively evaluate its production performance to identify areas of improvement. They provide stochastic modeling, variability analysis, and can generate reports based on their findings.
The greatest difference in the modeling and analysis capabilities of the two tools comes down to the technology powering them. SchedulePro is run with discrete event simulation, while VirtECS utilizes math programming technology. To understand the difference between the two, consider a scenario where you’re running a path through a maze. SchedulePro’s technology will give you a first-person viewpoint as you work through the maze, while VirtECS will give you an overhead view of the entire maze at once. You can find out more about the unique advantages of math programming and pitfalls of discrete event simulation in our in-depth article.
Constraints
One major drawback of the discrete event simulation framework is that it can be difficult to include all the constraints present in a manufacturing environment. SchedulePro is able to incorporate basic constraints, such as equipment and product resource requirements, but with its sequence-based foundation, it struggles to accommodate particularly specific constraints that pharmaceutical facilities often experience.
This is an area where VirtECS excels. Math programming is a constraint-based approach to scheduling and can account for nearly any constraint your facility may have. As a result, the schedules VirtECS produces are more likely to be accurate because they include all the elements that affect production. VirtECS pharmaceutical clients often include constraints like clean/dirty hold times, material expirations, and upstream train selection.
Flexibility
In addition to missing key constraints, discrete event simulators like SchedulePro typically become very complex very quickly, and their setup can make it difficult to modify or change anything in the schedule. With each production activity you add, the timeline of events gets more complicated and bogged down, which makes accounting for flexibility or changes challenging.
On the other hand, the VirtECS framework is incredibly flexible. It allows for manual overrides, which plants will need anytime there’s an equipment breakdown or error. Once those changes are made, VirtECS can then automatically reoptimize and reschedule the subsequent processes to minimize the disruption to total output. In addition, VirtECS can track mass balances, schedule based on need, and provide real-time updates to the in-house production team.
Continuous Learning
In an industry like pharmaceutical manufacturing, new innovations are introduced constantly, and planning and scheduling tools must keep abreast of these changes to continue providing services that meet plants’ current needs. As of the publication of this article, SchedulePro has not been updated since 2019, which means it is missing years of developments and advances that have altered the way pharmaceuticals are created in many plants. Perhaps most notably, they’re missing updates based on the major changes made during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the need to look for unforeseen constraints and supply chain delays.
The team at Advanced Process Combinatorics, Inc. is committed to regularly releasing new versions of VirtECS. One major advantage of VirtECS is that it aggregates data from each schedule it produces, which means insights it learns from optimizing one plant will be used to improve scheduling at every facility that uses VirtECS. This includes manufacturers that use VirtECS outside of the pharmaceutical industry. In this way, plants using VirtECS can benefit from data it wouldn’t have access to otherwise.
In addition, VirtECS offers integrations with other programs frequently used in manufacturing facilities, such as MES and ERP software. When these systems can all communicate, it minimizes the need for data entry and ensures each program is working from the most current information.
If your pharmaceutical manufacturing plant is looking for a flexible approach to planning, scheduling, or modeling that can account for all production constraints, you’ll want to consider implementing VirtECS in your facility. To learn more about VirtECS’ unique approach to optimizing pharmaceutical plants, download our short guide here.
by Kelsey H | Jul 11, 2023 | Planning & Scheduling
With many factors to account for and an extensive number of events to sequence, planning and scheduling for pharmaceutical sites is incredibly complicated to execute. This complexity has made way for multiple planning and scheduling software systems to hit the market over the years in order to help plants manage their operations. These systems use a variety of different technical philosophies to generate production plans for your plant. Two of the most common approaches are discrete event simulation and math programming, which we’ll discuss more in depth in this article.
What Is Discrete Event Simulation?
Discrete event simulation is an older and very common technology that software providers like SchedulePro use to create a manufacturing schedule. In fact, the software you currently use for planning and scheduling may be run with this type of approach. In discrete event simulation, every action involved in the manufacturing process is assigned a particular time stamp to create a chronological sequence. The software can then run simulated events through the sequence to observe and record predictions under different circumstances to help the site identify its schedule.
There are some advantages to building a schedule with this method. When every action, component, and constraint is included in the model, it can produce accurate results. It also supports running simulations under many different conditions, such as with different amounts of raw material on hand, which can offer helpful insights. However, discrete event simulation also comes with some significant disadvantages that are difficult to overcome.
Drawbacks of Discrete Event Simulation
At every point in generating a production schedule, there are an incredible number of decisions that must be made. To generate a potential schedule, discrete event simulators will follow one set of decisions at a time, using rules of thumb to dictate each decision. Unfortunately, the rules of thumb don’t apply to every situation, so simulators require a lot of attention and maintenance from programmers to remain functional. Similarly, discrete event simulators also typically offer features that are standard across many industries, which means the software may not be tailored to the specific problems pharmaceutical manufacturers experience. As a result, the insights the tool produces may not address the real bottlenecks the plant is facing or may require substantial effort from the end user to keep them working.
Additionally, the sequencing nature of discrete event simulation means that the backend of the program can become extremely complex very quickly. For pharmaceutical plants in particular, the many processes and moving parts of their systems often result in a tool that is very convoluted and can only be managed by one or two expert users. This can be a problem because the tool becomes slower and more difficult to use. If the tool isn’t user-friendly, adding updates whenever the plant model changes becomes very time-consuming.
The complexity of discrete event simulation becomes especially challenging when manufacturers need to add in a new constraint to the system. Because of the time, resources, and processing power it takes to update the model, many manufacturers choose not to make updates regularly. However, if the tool doesn’t account for all current constraints, such as hold times or material expirations, the schedule it produces is less likely to be accurate and more likely to result in errors, delays, and less output.
How Math Programming Adds Flexibility & Accuracy
One alternative to scheduling with discrete event simulation is math programming technology. Math programming is a more contemporary solution than simulation technologies, as it offers the ability to move back and forth in time to find the best combination of decisions based on your plant’s constraints. Most companies avoided powering their scheduling software with mathematical programming because the equations needed to build the tool require advanced expertise. Additionally, they struggle some struggle to overcome the computational cost of formulating and solving the complex math equations that generate the optimized schedules. However, if a piece of software can overcome those barriers, it will provide much more flexibility within the model, identify more opportunities for optimization, and require less effort from the end user.
Our team at APCI has spent the last three decades developing VirtECS, our planning and scheduling tool with a math programming framework. VirtECS is built on highly sophisticated algorithms written by our PhD engineers and specifically designed to model real-world manufacturing processes. Our tool overcomes the barriers associated with developing the equations because it understands and models the process physics of real manufacturing plants, and it incorporates additional data gathered from ERP systems, MES, and process historians. It also uses augmented intelligence to continuously improve the program and advance its scheduling capabilities.
As a result, the VirtECS interface can be updated much more quickly when plants need to add new constraints, products, or equipment to their model. It can also handle more specific constraints than many of our competitors, such as upstream train selection, maintenance schedules, and product changeover activities. With a more detailed model, VirtECS can provide insights on how plants can account for uncertainty and variability to create the most optimized and accurate production schedule. If you’re interested in learning how VirtECS can transform modeling, planning and scheduling for your manufacturing site, sign up for a short introductory call with one of our experts so we can learn more about your unique needs.
by Kelsey H | May 9, 2023 | Planning & Scheduling, Process Improvement
Despite the interconnected nature of the modern business world, many manufacturing companies still treat their production sites as individual, separate entities. These facilities are often located offsite from the company’s headquarters and tend to focus on their specific production duties, rather than the business’ broader strategies. As a result, these sites can end up disconnected from each other, with each plant using its own operations procedures, software systems and tools.
While giving plants the autonomy to make their own decisions might seem like the most efficient strategy, having a different system at each site can create siloed data and a lack of coordination across the entire organization. This frequently leads to errors in data reporting, forecasting and decision-making, as well as more labor required to sort through information from each site’s software. According to research from IDC, companies lose a significant amount of revenue each year due to inefficiencies from siloed business systems.
Breaking down data silos and increasing coordination among plants can help resolve many of these pain points. By implementing one software system across all manufacturing sites, businesses can improve their efficiency and decision-making as a whole.
More Powerful Data Set
When a company’s manufacturing plants all use the same software tools, it makes it much easier to compile and analyze the data generated by these sites’ production processes. Instead of sorting through multiple sets of data organized in all different ways, business leaders can use one tool’s powerful algorithm to quickly sort and analyze all of the information available at once. With a higher volume of data to access, the tool will be able to identify more opportunities for process improvements at each site. Even if the sites work on different products or perform different functions, data related to production efficiency can still provide relevant insights that every plant can benefit from.
Sharing Data Between Sites
On a similar note, easier access to mass data can also help plants share strategies and implement successful tactics more quickly. For example, if one site finds a base schedule that optimizes their material usage or minimizes downtime, other similar sites can access the published schedule and immediately start aligning their operations. If plants use competing programs, it can be difficult to translate the data and insights between them. Collaborating and sharing information about how to be as efficient as possible will help the entire business produce a higher output and generate more profits.
Smarter Decision-Making
The benefits to more accurate and accessible data aren’t limited to the plant level. With an interconnected system of software and data, company decision makers can also make more informed investments into their manufacturing processes. For example, a company may be considering adding capacity to one of their sites to increase production of a high-demand product. If they can access a virtual model of each site within one shared tool, they’ll be able to test and compare the impact of added capacity at every plant. Alternatively, shared resources can also be helpful in more urgent situations. When one plant experiences an unexpected delay, manufacturing leaders can identify available capacity at other sites with the necessary equipment and materials on hand to complete the production run. This information will help decision makers find the best potential return on their investment or make the most strategic choice for the business.
Integration Between Programs and Plants
To generate even greater insights, manufacturing businesses should strive to select software and programs that can connect and share data to other platforms. More data – and particularly more non-siloed data – will only give the business more opportunity for optimization and efficiency. Sharing data between programs can help the sites gain a deeper analysis of plant operations, understand the relationships between manufacturing functions, and better communicate important insights between departments.
Over the past 30 years, we’ve used our planning and scheduling tool, VirtECS, to generate optimized results for some of the most complex manufacturers in the world. Many of our client relationships started with just one project at one site, but after seeing how much value VirtECS could generate, they quickly decided to implement the tool at their other plants as well. In the past, we’ve connected VirtECS to many of our clients’ other programs, such as forecasting and ERP systems, to allow for end-to-end data sharing and optimization. To learn about our journey implementing VirtECS into several sites for one of our specialty chemical clients, you can read more in our case study.
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.”
