pharmaceuticals

Ibuprofen Purification
A company selling a generic version of the painkiller ibuprofen was production constrained and could sell more product than they could make. Over an 18-month period, site management and engineering teams had increased output by 2% and all involved believed that the production process was running at its absolute maximum.

Working with Hagen software, tools, and implementation services, a plant team of managers, engineers, and operators reduced the cycle time of the batch process from 606 minutes to 320 minutes. This resulted in a 53% increase in output using existing manufacturing assets – adding $2.9 million directly to the bottom line of the company.  At the end of the period, the site senior engineer, who had designed, built and commissioned the plant, said “I thought I understood this process inside out. But now that we've established the plant’s potential, I think that I did not.  But I do now".