Axantia Increases OEE by 126% with Cogtive’s Data-Driven Strategy
Axantia, a holding company based in Dubai, has a strong presence in the health and pharmaceutical sectors. With a portfolio of 200 products available in more than 19 countries across the Middle East and Africa, the company continues on a path of international expansion.
To meet the demands of different healthcare segments, Axantia operates three manufacturing plants in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, each specialized in specific production lines. The company develops, manufactures, and distributes generic medicines and other formulations.
One of Axantia’s subsidiaries, Pharma International Company (PIC), is responsible for operations in Jordan, licensed to produce and market a wide range of products, including cephalosporin and non-cephalosporin products.
For more than two decades, Axantia has been a benchmark in the pharmaceutical market, driving innovation through management excellence and a highly qualified team that upholds the highest quality standards.
Challenge
“Manual processes were predominant across the shop floor. Teams relied on spreadsheets to collect, manage, and store data — a method prone to errors and inefficiencies,” says Mais Zetawi, Process Improvement and Documentation Supervisor at Axantia (PIC). The Process Improvement and Production Planning teams faced unreliable information, which made effective decision-making difficult. With an operational expansion on the horizon, the need for a solution was urgent.
For data-driven teams, unreliable information creates bottlenecks in production flow management. “At the time, data took a long time to reach management and was often inaccurate, leading to delayed strategic decisions,” says Alaa AbuAlsabe, Senior Process Improvement Manager at Axantia. Meetings that required real-time insights, such as Gemba Walks, often lacked the accurate data needed for cohesive strategies.
The lack of machine availability data made effective planning nearly impossible. This limited the operational capacity of the equipment, while the root causes of inefficiencies remained hidden. Without visibility into key indicators, the decision-making process became too slow to drive tangible improvements, requiring excessive time for data analysis and corrective action.
These inefficiencies translated into unnecessary operating costs — the company was, in practice, losing money due to inaccurate data and manual processes, an issue that, over time, could threaten financial stability.
Solution
The teams understood the problem but had no clear solution — until they discovered Cogtive’s technology. The platform delivered exactly what they needed: real-time data collection and customizable dashboards for agile management. With Cogtive, Axantia was able to:
- Improve data management
- Optimize workflows
- Increase visibility
- Strengthen communication between departments
- Scale operational improvements
With Cogtive, the Process Improvement and Production Planning teams began analyzing data in detail and implementing actions based on the Six Big Losses framework and Pareto charts (Top 5) to raise OEE. Flow View made it possible to monitor and control production lines end to end, displaying the status of each machine by production phase and scheduling all batches in an integrated way.
“Thanks to the intuitive interface and customizable options, Cogtive was quickly adopted by other departments, fostering a culture of data sharing and analysis. There was an initial learning curve, as with any new technology, but the platform gained traction on the shop floor,” says Mais Zetawi, Process Improvement and Documentation Supervisor at Axantia (PIC).
Bringing Cogtive into Daily Operations
Today, Axantia (PIC) equips its operators with approximately 58 tablets to log events and analyze key indicators. The most widely used features include:
OEE Management
Machine performance can be improved with detailed visibility into the shop floor. The Pareto chart breakdown allowed Axantia to analyze equipment availability, identifying the causes and events that consumed productive time. It also enabled tracking of scheduled and unscheduled downtime, ensuring the production team could maximize the use of all available capacity to keep production running continuously.
Data is collected through sensors and IoT devices installed on the machines, feeding the system with information on approved and rejected quantities. These insights allow teams to monitor production performance and quality in real time.
Maintenance indicators (MTTR, MTBF, MTTP, MTBP, MWT) are displayed directly on the OEE dashboard, centralizing essential management information in one place.
Equipment Dashboard screens spread across the shop floor, providing real-time visibility into OEE, maintenance, setup, and more
Job tracking and inconsistency analysis are quickly accessed through a web interface, making real-time visibility possible from anywhere. The information can also be viewed on custom dashboards, the events kanban, and the temperature and humidity panels.
QR code login for job tracking made it possible to create different permissions based on each task’s responsibility and corresponding area. This feature enabled validation of maintenance, quality, and other types of downtime, improving management’s control over the records entered into the platform.
Everything that impacts equipment performance is logged and accessible to management, enabling more precise strategies and action plans.
Flow Management
Shop floor order flow is now monitored in real time through Cogtive’s Flow View. Queue and scheduled batch management made end-to-end flow easier, ensuring on-time deliveries and better use of installed capacity.
With Flow View, the team gained predictability over batch progress across production stages, while also being able to add comments and notes to order cards. Management became more thorough and in-depth, driving continuous improvement and new growth opportunities.
Indicators monitored by managers and operators include: lead time, cycle time, route deviations, inconsistencies, temperature, and humidity.
With Cogtive’s Flow View, managers track production status in real time, from raw material to finished product
Reports and Integrations
Reports are an essential part of management at Axantia, delivering the data needed to guide teams in plant operations. Reports generated by the Cogtive platform include: event logs, route deviation, OEE, performance by order, lead time, inconsistencies, bottlenecks, holding time, registration, setup, audit trail, flow, gaps, anomalies, sensors, and Pareto.
The Cogtive platform can integrate with multiple technologies to enhance plant management. Axantia uses these integrations to speed up the processing of large product databases within Cogtive:
- SAP Integration: feeds the system with production orders (creation, deletion, and changes).
- BMS Integration: provides the system with machine temperature and humidity data (minimum and maximum parameter configuration).
Having data available across every area of the plant improved communication, ensuring everyone stayed aligned with minimal friction. Real-time insights, such as OEE indicators, allowed teams to set clear goals and benchmarks.
Results
In the first year, the teams recorded transformative results in operational efficiency, data reliability, and action-driven strategies.
The most notable result was a 126% increase in OEE, from 18.5% in January 2024 to 41.9% in November 2024. Axantia now aims to reach 45% OEE by the end of 2024, as part of its two-year strategic plan.
Critical meetings, such as Gemba Walks, became more efficient and began offering greater visibility into plant operations. Real-time monitoring allowed management to stay informed directly from the control room.
Productivity improvements were evident in key areas such as Tableting and Blistering. Using Cogtive’s historical data and Pareto charts, the teams identified and resolved key inefficiencies by applying Lean Six Sigma tools.
These actions significantly increased output without requiring substantial investment in new equipment. By leveraging existing machinery, the teams achieved higher production quality, improved management performance, and continuous improvements.
Monthly production growth in Tableting and Blistering throughout 2024
“Production went from 3.3 million units in January 2024 to 5.6 million in November 2024, simply by optimizing machine availability in Blistering and using resources at full capacity,” says Sharief AlAtrash, Process Improvement and Production Planning Manager at Axantia (PIC).
COGTIVE
Cogtive is a SaaS (Software as a Service) company expanding productivity potential in the manufacturing industry, uncovering hidden capacity on the production line, changing the way leadership sees the shop floor, increasing production efficiency, and impacting business results. Built on IoT and Artificial Intelligence, our software enables a drastic reduction in line stoppages, improves productivity rates, optimizes the time of operators and managers, and allows factories to reach peak performance.
