PlanPerfect: An integrated production planning and decision support tool for pharmaceutical plants

Abstract

The pharmaceutical industry is grappling with the need to optimize its manufacturing operations and improve sustainability by reducing operational costs and conserving resources. Motivated by the urgent need of efficient decision-support tools for operational planning in pharmaceutical companies and the inability of existing tools to address the complex requirements of pharmaceutical plants, we have devised PlanPerfect. Our copyrighted tool is developed in association with a Singapore based plant of a multi-national pharmaceutical company and has a competitive advantage on intelligence, speed, versatility, cost, and ease-of-use. PlanPerfect, is specifically customized for its application in pharmaceutical plants and aids decisions pertinent to campaign lengths with number of batches in each campaign, campaign sequencing and sequence-dependent cleaning and setups, plant maintenance, NCEs testing and production, material outsourcing, resource allocation, manpower handling, inventory management, plant utilization, and waste generation. © 2012 Elsevier B.V.