IBM ILOG Pharmaceutical Solutions

The pharmaceutical industry is faced with an extreme version of many of the standard challenges facing process manufacturers. Typically, the pharmaceutical manufacturing process—whether it be based on traditional chemistry-based or on new biotech processes—is characterized by a high number of process steps and much longer cycle times than exist in other industries. Add a high rate of manufacturing process innovation, and you have a significantly more complex planning and scheduling environment.

IBM ILOG optimization technology leverages your company's existing IT assets, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM) systems. Best-of-breed optimization solutions from IBM help improve overall operational efficiency by one to five percent, lower inventory costs and reduce the cost of waste and changeover significantly. Fortunately, these challenging problems can be solved with IBM ILOG Plant PowerOps.

IBM ILOG Plant PowerOps for the pharmaceutical industry is the only application of its kind: a completely integrated solution for production planning and detailed scheduling. This solution addresses problems such as multi-dimensional changeovers, cleaning-in-place, convergent and divergent material flows, the management of raw and intermediate products, and tank management.

The application's integrated planning and scheduling lets you coordinate intermediate product production and finished goods production based on demand, shelf life, production lead times, and cleaning requirements. Mid- and long-term plans are generated with schedules that are both feasible and optimal. Plans can be executed with minimal user intervention so that planners can focus on managing exceptions instead of spending time manually repairing schedule breakdowns.