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.”
