Apsen cuts lead time by 46% and postpones a new plant by more than 4 years

The challenge

Apsen Farmacêutica is a family-owned Brazilian pharmaceutical company with more than 50 years of history. Its portfolio covers neurology, psychiatry, otolaryngology, urology, gynecology, rheumatology, orthopedics, gastroenterology, geriatrics, endocrinology and angiology.

On the shop floor, indicators were recorded by hand. Every reading had to be collected, typed in and only then turned into a report, so there was a long gap between what happened on a line and the moment a manager could see it. Stoppages and bottlenecks surfaced late, and decisions were made looking in the rearview mirror.

The production flow had the same blind spot. Apsen tracked it in a very basic way, and much of the data was imprecise or simply missing. There was no information, for example, on how many batches were queued in front of each piece of equipment. Production managers needed to find stoppages and bottlenecks faster and to see the flow as it actually ran.

The solution

Cogtive started with the OEE foundation. Apsen runs both continuous-run and batch equipment, so data capture was set up asset by asset, with IoT and the tablet app according to the needs of each machine. In total, 51 pieces of equipment were connected.

From that point on, every piece of equipment produced accurate, consistent data in real time. Managers follow OEE, the downtime Pareto, FIFO, the current event, speed, the timeline and setup on the Equipment Dashboard, one click away, and alerts reach the team while a stoppage is still running.

On top of the foundation, Apsen adopted the Flow pillar. Flow View replaced the old tracking with a live map of every batch along its route, with real-time information for each stage and each piece of equipment. Queues that had been invisible became measurable, and bottlenecks could be pinpointed while the batch was still in process instead of after the shift closed.

The results

With the production cycle visible end to end, from the indicators of each machine to a 360° view of the plant, Apsen cut its lead time by 46%.

The gain went straight to capacity. Stoppages are detected and resolved faster, bottlenecks are identified precisely, and production tracking and planning now run on real-time data. The capacity recovered on the existing lines allowed Apsen to postpone the investment in a new plant by more than four years.

Márcio Mendes, Operational Excellence Manager at Apsen, measures the difference in hours. Without visibility, without being online and without alerts, a stoppage could last four or even five hours. Today, the same stoppage might last around two.

• Lead time 46% shorter
• Investment in a new plant postponed by more than four years
• 51 pieces of equipment connected through IoT and the tablet app
• Real-time indicators for every machine and every production stage
• Precise bottleneck identification, fewer stoppages and better use of resources across the chain