Altergon Italia S.r.l. is a center of excellence and Innovation for the biotechnological production of ultra-pure Hyaluronic Acid and medical plasters.
In 2001, due to the success of some products licensed to multinational companies in the sector, the Swiss company Altergon SA strategically decided to start production and R&D activities on the Italian territory, and more specifically in the Altergon Italia site based in Avellino.
The pharmaceutical division of Altergon Italia owns not only the know-how but also modern facilities to produce medical plasters and Hyaluronic Acid for different applications.
The products can be divided into the following categories:
- Hydrogel water-based plaster
- Drug-in adhesive matrix certch
- Double layer patch
- Odf films
- Hyaluronic Acid
- Medical devices.
Objectives
From the analysis conducted on the customer, the main need of Altergon Italia was to identify a tool that could provide higher value and greater evidence of data in order to create close coordination between planning, production, sales and purchasing, within its planning model.
Solution
From the analysis of the main critical issues that emerged, the inclusion of the sedApta suite scheduling tool, Factory Scheduling, implemented by partner Techedge was identified as the possible solution.
Through this solution, the following goals were achieved:
- Have a tool that allows Altergon Italia to perform a feasibility check of production plans;
- Decrease human error through a tool that could be fully integrated with the SAP environment;
- Replace the excel file currently used for scheduling with more sophisticated tools;
- To be able to schedule production lines at finite capacity;
- Improve the current production and purchasing planning processes by streamlining operations and improving data quality, enabling more reliable responses to the logistics and sales structure;
- Consolidate, in the scheduler database, process knowledge currently managed independently by production managers.
Benefits
The benefits achieved through the use of the sedApta solution are:
- Alignment between production demand and production capacity;
- Immediate detection of new uncovered customer orders (on the MRP system this function is done manually and there is no evidence of new uncovered customer orders);
- Improved usage of production resources;
- Generation of feasible and optimized work plans;
- Optimize production sequences in the short – or very short term (e.g., format, bulk, active ingredient campaign management);
- Reduce setup/boning/cleaning times by optimizing campaigns;
- Perform manual forcing to production sequences with recalculation of set-up times;
- Simulate disruptive events on the schedule by defining specific priorities, optimizing resource capacity, defining production constraints;
- Synchronize the production of various production steps;
- Coordinate the arrival of materials with their use in production by drawing up reminder plan and any critical issues, and by making warehouse inventories more efficient;
- Analysis of shortfalls;
- Increased quality and timeliness of supplier reminders;
- Decreased queue times at the foot of the line;
- Synchronization of bulk and finished goods production, along with analysis activity, by managing links between batches;
- Immediate recalculation of the work plan in the presence of disturbances;
- Freezing and releasing scheduled plans in the short term;
- Improve the reliability of scheduling.