Professionalising warehouse operations to meet the demand for high value vaccines

The need to fund investment in high-value biopharmaceuticals and vaccines resulted in this global pharmaceutical company diversifying its product portfolio.

As a consequence the client faced increased production and distribution costs. It urgently needed to take action to professionalise the warehouse operations of its vaccine facility.

The client challenged us to support its senior leadership team to implement new standard ways of working across the site that would apply more control to processes. This had to be achieved without any disruption to production lines that would reduce supply or increase product wastage.

Our own experience, in our own company, has shown that a high level of employee engagement is the only way to sustain new ways of working.

• A diagnostic revealed a lack of process metrics. This impacted on the ability to set targets or plan resource in relation to fluctuating demand.
• We worked together to improve and standardise processes. 
• Our consultants engaged staff at all levels and coached them in Lean ways of working.
• Employees were then happy to solve problems at their root cause, instead of dealing with reoccurring issues on a daily basis.
• The entire warehouse staff, from the supervisor and team leaders to shop-floor workers, were actively engaged in transforming the warehouse into a model working area.
• All staff are committed to sustaining and further improving the standard ways of working in this facility.

To look more in depth at how we helped these warehouse operations, download a PDF version of the case study at the bottom of the page.

Within 10 weeks of the project, the results were as follows:

• Productivity improved by an average of 45%, resulting in the ability to redeploy ten staff members (saving the company €450,000)
• Reduction of space utilised by 40%
• Staff became more actively engaged in workload planning and performance management resulting in reduced delays and wastage

You can download a more in depth, PDF copy of the case study below.