Lundbeck gets award for manufacturing excellence
pharmafile | January 18, 2012 | News story | Manufacturing and Production |Â Â Lundbeck, Shingo, manufacturingÂ
Efforts by Lundbeck to boost the productivity of its manufacturing operations have borne fruit, with the company cutting costs by 25% over the last six years, and winning a prestigious industry award to boot.
Lundbeck has been awarded a silver medallion in the Shingo competition, a global contest that honours productivity achievements, and says it is the first European company to receive that accolade.
The Shingo prize is named after Japanese industrial engineer Shigeo Shingo, an architect of the Toyota production system, and is run by a non-profit organisation housed at the University of Utah in the US.
Shingo representatives inspected the plants facilities in Valby and Lumsas in December 2011, as part of the review process.
The Denmark-headquartered firm said it embraced Japanese lean production principles in 2006, and since then has reduced its cost of production to around 20% of sales, with the objective of ultimately reaching 10% of sales.
For comparison, other companies in the pharmaceutical sector typically spend around 25% of revenue on manufacturing.
The company told the Financial Times that among the measures implemented by the plants were a dramatic increase in packaging productivity that has allowed it to stop all outsourcing of packaging to third-party suppliers. It also said it can now manufacture active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) at cost levels that rival those offered by companies in Asia.
Other benefits of the programme have included increased employee motivation which in turn has resulted in “more flexible and reliable production,” according to Lundbeck.
“We have succeeded in creating a culture that supports continuous improvement,” said Lars Bang, the company’s senior vice president for supply operations and engineering.
“One reason for this is that our work with the lean method has not been limited to the usual tools, such as control board meetings. We have chosen an integrated approach, which among other things involves extensive training of all employees and managers in production,” he added.
Phil Taylor
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