Production process
In Geel alone, there are 5 production units including a
powdering unit. The active ingredients of medicines are
manufactured here.
“A characteristic of our multipurpose
plants in Geel is that they always work in batches – small
volumes varying between 2 and 6 m3 of product. Mixing raw
materials with solvents in our reactors leads to a chemical
process resulting in a soluble product with crystals. The
crystals are separated from the liquid in a centrifuge. After
that, they are dried in a desiccating plant before they go to
the powdering unit. In the powdering unit, the various
substances from the different production units come together
and are milled into powders. Now the powders are ready for
distribution to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical plants
worldwide for further processing. In the pharmaceutical
plants such as those in Beerse and Olen, binding agents and flavouring and colorants are added to the active ingredients
to make an ingestible pill, tablet or capsule,” says Jos Kenis,
Plant Manager at Janssen Pharmaceutica in Geel.
Investigation
“Although we’ve been successfully carrying out shutdowns in
the summer holidays in Geel for years, we still thought we needed to examine our shutdown strategy, the key question was: what is the ideal moment to carry out
a shutdown? And of course there are various parameters to
be taken into account such as the shutdown scope, the
interdependency of the different production plants, bottle-
neck equipment and production planning. The fact is that if
units in a particular plant are idle for 3 to 3 weeks, that can
have immediate consequences for the other production units
because production stages in the process do not necessarily
have to take place in the same plant. That’s why we decided
to call in the aid of PDM at the beginning of 2007. Their job
was to test our present shutdown strategy and then, based on that, to establish the optimum shutdown strategy for the
years to come.”
Approach
PDM started by defining the various shutdown parameters. By
means of interviews, a data study and a workshop, we then
made an inventory of the exact extent of each parameter’s
impact on the shutdown strategy. Then, based on this result,
a model was created in the form of a ow diagram with
parameters that can be reused every year. By using this
model to go through a future shutdown step by step, the
client can see exactly how long each phase takes and also
the total duration of the shutdown. Apart from producing a flow diagram for the years to come, we also defined various
scenarios for the shutdown in 2008 and wrote a practical
script. It’s a script that clearly explains the best way to prepare
for and implement a shutdown. It includes all of the six
phases from concept to evaluation.
Finally
“At first glance, all of this seems easier than it was in practice.
This had to do with the large number of parameters in fluencing
strategy. Nevertheless, the people from PDM succeeded in
producing a model and a script that we can also use as a
guideline in the future for taking structured strategy decisions.
At the moment, we are using these documents to prepare for
a shutdown in 2008,” says Kenis.
