Visit To Merck, Sharp & Dohme, Cramlington on 9th February 2000On a very windy Wednesday night in early February seventeen doughty voyeurs found their way to Cramlington north of Newcastle-upon-Tyne to cast their eyes over the plant and processes of MSD's main tableting facility in Europe.
Our hosts were Derek Bourne and Pete Smith. We were treated to an hour of presentations on the changes made from 1994 when MSD decided to make Cramlington their main tablet processing and packing site in Europe. This is a high volume plant:
- 5 billion tablets pa
- 90 million packs pa
A site in Holland does the smaller volume products. The opportunity to make major cultural changes was taken during the growth phase to enable creative deployment of people - not everyone is happy to embrace change! The platform chosen for change was Total Quality Management driving Continuous Improvement. The focus was on the Supply Chain not functions. A great deal of operator training- both task and behavioural- was done, leading ultimately, to empowered teams. Their achievement in this area was given as... Operators
- Write 'Standard Operating Procedures'
- Present to senior management and visitors
- Contact supplies direct
- Involved in choosing and qualifying equipment
- Ownership of their process and equipment
- Carry out peer GMP checks
- Involved in recruitment
- Teams Organise Their Own Cover
- Teams Carry Out Safety And Gmp Investigations
- Authority To Purchase Where Appropriate and
- Continuous Improvement Is A Way Of Life
Out of office hours there was no member of traditional management on site! Class A MRPII was also used to drive improvement. This was started in 1994 but required a re-launch in 1998. Benefits have accrued:
- Deliveries to the distribution site in Europe is 98% on time and to the UK organisation 99.6%.
- Their S&OP process ensures appropriate stability in the near term production plans.
- Cycle time reductions have increased responsiveness and decreased inventory.
Perhaps most rewardingly - Their Quality Of Life has improved so they have time to think and perform Continuous Improvement. After the presentations came the Plant visit.
This is an impressive site - there has obviously been much money invested.
- Much of the processing plant is new and paper batch sheets have been eliminated.
- Most recording was done by barcode readers rather than pens!
- The warehouse was automatic with the pallets moved to the line side by Automatic Guided Vehicles.
- The large output tableting lines were manned by two operators who set-up and operated the line.
- A full pallet of packs was taken from the end of the line direct to the despatch area via an automatic overhead conveyor system which serviced all the packing lines.
- Pallets for the European markets were stuffed directly and randomly into containers which when full were trucked to the distribution hub in Holland. The hub reorganised the loads into orders and shipped.
We in our turn were dispatched at 9pm having had a really enjoyable visit. For those of you who missed this visit, if there is ever a repeat, make the effort to go, it's worth it.
Bob Foster MIOM
Related Topics:
Continuous improvement
