Pharma producers of today often struggles with their order batches getting smaller.
A few changes can be attributed to this, including the rapid progress in research and advancements in medicine that has led to new targeted therapies, speciality pharmaceuticals and personalised medicine.
Each market also has specific requirements that manufacturers must adhere to, in terms of product formats, packaging and labelling. This further breaks down each manufacturing batch into smaller orders batches, requiring more and more changeovers.
These trends indicate that order sizes are decreasing, in some cases as much as 70% of batches being less than a few hundred units.
With more frequent and lengthy changeover times from one batch to another, high speed legacy lines can only deliver a fraction of their full capacity. Changeovers have been reported as taking up as much as 80% of production time, severely compromising the equipment’s efficiency.
Production planning becomes focused on the limitations of the production equipment rather than on market needs.