Pharmaceuticals company cures growth challenges

This pharmaceutical company operates six state-of-the-art manufacturing plants, and produces more than 1,000 varieties of medicines.

The company is dedicated to improving the longevity and quality of life through innovation and excellence in pharmaceutical formulations. It is committed to ensuring that its products and processes meet the strictest requirements, and enforces rigorous ethical standards. Customer service and satisfaction are key to the company’s strategy, and it constantly focuses on meeting the needs of its customers with innovative methods and proven expertise.

The company’s high standards have prompted international recognition and the enterprise has grown to produce medicines for many of the world’s largest multinational corporations, with the majority of its products sold to export.

Challenges of growth
Selling to diverse international markets presents significant regulatory challenges. As most countries will only accept import and sale of medicines that have been manufactured to internationally recognized good manufacturing practice (GMP) standards, it is essential for the company to ensure that its products are consistently produced and controlled according to quality standards.

The company’s Deputy IT Manager states, “We are responsible for manufacturing more than 1,000 varieties of medicines. It is essential that we have an accurate overview of every detail of the manufacturing process, so that we can ensure that all of our products meet the high quality standards expected by our customers and comply with global regulations.”

The company’s manufacturing facilities are accredited with World Health Organization (WHO) GMP and the Brazilian National Health Surveillance Agency (ANVISA) certificates. However, the company wished to further expand into European markets, which required it to undergo extensive and stringent inspection of its manufacturing facilities, procedures and drug formulations in order to be granted the necessary certification.

“We were looking into expanding our operations into the wider European market, which would require us to undertake extensive audits in order to be granted export licenses for European Union countries,” comments the Deputy IT Manager. “It is important for us to keep our SAP ERP software current in order to ensure that we can meet the demands of new audits, and that we are well-placed to respond to future opportunities for growth.”

The company has been relying on SAP ERP applications to manage its business systems for many years. The validity of data obtained in SAP software has a proven record of being well accepted by auditors and regulators worldwide. As the company grew, it realized that it would be better placed to manage the increased demands placed on its manufacturing systems if it were running the latest version of SAP ERP solutions.

To enable a move to the latest version of SAP ERP software, the company identified that its existing hardware infrastructure lacked the necessary computing power and stability. The company wanted to acquire a new server and storage infrastructure that would fully support its SAP ERP upgrade.

The objectives were to achieve reduced production planning times, faster regulatory approval of associated compliance documents, and faster financial decision making in response to changing sales and market demands.

Flexible, high-performance solution
The IT team evaluated a range of solutions, including offerings from Dell and HP, but was ultimately won over by a proposal from IBM. “After looking at a number of options, we were convinced that IBM offered the best possible solution for our needs,” states the Deputy IT Manager.

The company worked with IBM to implement a single IBM BladeCenter S Chassis housing three IBM BladeCenter HS22 blade servers running Red Hat Linux. The BladeCenter S chassis sits in a standard rack, and the chassis can contain up to six blades, offering the company the ability to flexibly increase its server capacity to match business growth.

Each HS22 blade is also equipped with two Intel Xeon 5600 series processors, which improve productivity through intelligent processing performance and maximize energy efficiency by automatically regulating power consumption.

The system’s three blade servers support production, backup and domain environments for the company’s SAP ERP systems. To maximize the performance and efficiency of its BladeCenter servers, the company also implemented an IBM Intelligent Cluster™ solution.

The BladeCenter technology is attached to an IBM System Storage DS3500 Express device, which stores the company’s production data. With its simple, efficient and flexible approach to storage, the DS3500 is a cost-effective, fully integrated complement to the company’s IBM BladeCenter servers.

It also supports the company’s complete range of data capacity requirements, with high-performance SAS disks for applications and normal speed SATA drives for files, data, and backup. The new server and storage environment will provide a stable platform for SAP ERP software, and will scale to accommodate business growth.

The new SAP ERP applications included modules for Financials and Controlling, Production Planning, Materials Management and Quality Management, which are accessed by some 120 users at the company. The SAP applications help the company to institutionalize compliance across its core processes, and improve efficiencies and quality throughout the manufacturing process.

Boosting integration and process efficiency
Following its SAP ERP upgrade, the company now benefits from even tighter integration and improved management across its range of business processes. Data collected directly from production lines is immediately available for analysis, and is highly detailed and easily verifiable.

The company is able to decrease manufacturing variability and obtain a single view of key information through one system, providing consistent and compliant batch records and reducing the risk of regulatory non-compliance.

“We face a lot of pressures from global regulation and our clients, which makes it essential for us to have excellent visibility and control over our entire production process,” remarks the company’s Deputy IT Manager. “With SAP ERP, we are well-placed to manage these challenges, as the system is highly integrated and quickly delivers accurate information.”

It is much easier and quicker for management to obtain a detailed breakdown of cost structures across its diverse range of products. “We can select a particular batch of medicine and determine exactly how much it costs to produce, for example,” explains the Deputy IT Manager.

“We can then compare the results to previous batches, and determine if wastage can be reduced. This improved view of production output allows us to control costs more effectively, and identify where overheads can be reduced or where profit margins can be increased.

“Thanks to the analytics capabilities provided by SAP applications, we have been able to reduce our production costs.

“These savings are vital for us, as the pharmaceuticals market is highly competitive – we need to be able to keep expenses down wherever we can, so we can continue to deliver the same low-cost products to our clients, without sacrificing quality.”

Reliable and powerful foundation
With the IBM solution, the company has gained a powerful and secure operating platform to support its SAP ERP software environment.

“We believe that IBM provides the best hardware solutions for running SAP applications,” says the Deputy IT Manager. “Our IBM BladeCenter solution has helped us to greatly reduce the complexity of managing our SAP environment by integrating all of our production systems into a single BladeCenter chassis. We have also gained the security of knowing that our key application data is running on a highly stable platform.”

The IBM BladeCenter S is designed to deliver high computing power in an energy-efficient package, making it easy and cost-effective for the company to get the most out of its key SAP applications. BladeCenter technology gives the company the flexibility to add up to three more blade servers when they are required.

As the company only needs to manage one central system, it can reduce the amount of time and effort spent by IT staff on administration and maintenance, helping to free up staff for more business-critical tasks.

Running the latest SAP ERP software on IBM BladeCenter enables the company to provide documented proof that correct procedures are consistently followed at each step in the manufacturing process, and that quality standards are kept high. This plays a key role in helping the company to meet its objective of obtaining export licenses for the European Union.

The Deputy IT Manager concludes, “Our combined SAP and IBM solution will allow us to better adhere to a growing number of regulations. It will also give us the flexibility to manage high product complexity and respond faster and more effectively to constantly-changing global demand.

“With SAP software on IBM BladeCenter, we now have a solid foundation that will support the business as it continues to grow, no matter what challenges we might face.”