GSK takes BI pill at US factories

US: GlaxoSmithKline plc (GSK), a research-based pharmaceutical and healthcare company, has fully deployed Informance solutions and advisory services in their Clifton, New Jersey and Aiken, South Carolina manufacturing facilities. As a press release adds, this is as part of a global framework agreement for global business intelligence to drive and sustain manufacturing operations performance.

Under the agreement, GlaxoSmithKline picked Informance as a preferred solution to assess improvement opportunities, align plant tactics with corporate strategies, and exercise the most efficient use of the information to sustain the effects of operational excellence activities.

"Pharmaceutical manufacturers are under tremendous pressure to increase product volume in their own plants, in order to reduce contract manufacturing and improve margins. They must often achieve this higher volume with optimized resources -- a challenging task without the help of real-time discovery analytics for operational excellence."

They usually find that simple OEE tools are not adequate to drive the improvement agenda, and leading manufacturers, especially pharmaceutical companies, look to solutions that deliver facts, pervasive visibility, and maximum knowledge transfer, along with real data, actual root cause analytics, and a deep understanding of problems, adds a company statement.

"While OEE is often an important first step in an improvement initiative, it's not until plant and executive management can quantify and report the financial impact of performance improvements that manufacturers begin to see a contribution to financial performance," reports John Oskin, Executive Vice President of Informance. "Manufacturers like GlaxoSmithKline use Informance solutions together with IMPACT services to help discover and evaluate opportunities in manufacturing, so that they can take action on those that add the greatest benefit."