Benchmarking manufacturing processes and continuous operational excellence are at the core of our capability to deliver quality medicines to our patients in 76 countries.
Benchmarking manufacturing processes and continuous operational excellence are at the core of our capability to deliver quality medicines to our patients in 66 countries
We manufacture a portfolio of complex APIs and 1,150+ drug master files across key therapy areas such as Oncology, Cardio-vascular, Central Nervous System and Anti-Diabetes. Our facilities and teams deliver quality output across our 22 manufacturing facilities globally, while ensuring timely supplies to our markets. Our Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) capability is rooted in 8 manufacturing units globally. These are operated in accordance with cGMP and audited by international regulatory bodies such as the US FDA.
Smart operations
The World Economic Forum has recognised our largest manufacturing facility in Bachupally, Hyderabad, as part of its Global Lighthouse Network.
The successful inclusion of our 25-year old site in Hyderabad as a ‘Digital Lighthouse’ factory is a big milestone in our productivity improvement journey. We have seen significant financial and operational impact from the journey (From 2017 to 2021, we have seen a 56% increase in our factory output and a 30% reduction in production lead time). We are in the process of scaling and replicating this to the rest of our manufacturing network. We aspire to be the most efficient pharma operations in the world. Our productivity improvement and digitalisation efforts are key to staying competitive, meeting business imperatives, and meeting our ambitious ESG goals.
Building such ‘factories of the future’ is integral to innovation and to build healthcare of the future.
We began our digitalisation journey four years ago with an ambitious programme to digitise our core. This involved upgrade of infrastructure and digitisation of processes for robust and comprehensive data capture. Real-time data and insights laid the foundation for Project ‘OpsNext’ which was initiated two years ago to transform the plant into an Industry 4.0-driven ‘Lighthouse’ factory as defined by the WEF. The site saw the deployment of six of the eight technologies of 4IR – Advanced Analytics, Digital Twins, Robotic Process Automation, Augmented/Virtual/Mixed Reality, Digital Performance Management and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). The OpsNext team identified 40+ business results linked use cases impacting various aspects of productivity such as customer service, quality, energy consumption, sustainability, equipment efficiency and people productivity. The company also invested heavily in building people capabilities such as digital and analytics translators, data scientists and data engineers. Our DnA business translators have become experts at identifying what needs improvement in the physical world, taking it to the digital world, solving it in the digital world, and bringing those recommendations back into the physical world for implementation.
Our smart autonomous factories, managed with data and machine learning, are lowering pharma manufacturing costs, improving quality and increasing productivity.
As of October '22, our journey has already yielded significant results at the site – 43% manufacturing cost improvement, 30% reduction in production lead time, 41% energy consumption reduction, and significant dip in quality deviations.
