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5 MES solutions to address industry challenges

Pharmaceutical manufacturers are operating in an increasingly competitive and fast-moving environment. Integrated continuous manufacturing, individualised medicine, counterfeiting protection, and a focus on product quality are just some of the trends creating new pressures. The right MES solutions can address and overcome many of these complex challenges by providing real-time visibility, thereby enabling better process understanding, faster issue resolution, and improved decision-making.

1. Quality Challenges

With paper-based systems, companies can maintain high quality; however, ensuring this level comes at a high cost. An MES reduces the cost of quality while ensuring no drop in quality. MES provides enforced compliance in many aspects of manufacturing, including enforced Standard Operating Procedures.

The risk of errors is minimised by automating manual operations and validating all data entry. And if there are any discrepancies, they are flagged immediately, and the process is halted, preventing production delays and batch failures.

2. Production Challenges

The more products handled in production or packaging, the less effective paper-based systems become. Not all batch records are completed “Right First Time”, which, alongside batch failures and errors being identified too late, are all disadvantages of the paper-based production process. These issues can be eliminated with the right MES solutions.

Reviews of paper-based batch records can also be frustratingly slow. An Electronic Batch Record dramatically shortens the production release process — every step is automatically verified, saving time by working by exception, as operators are alerted to omissions and exceptions.

3. Cost Challenges

From low-cost generics to high-margin, specialised drugs, everyone is working to make manufacturing more efficient, less costly, and more consistently reliable.

With the introduction of an MES, the largest cost savings can be achieved by streamlining manual processes, reducing staff costs, minimising the risk of scrapped production and disposal costs, and providing significant scope to reduce inventory levels through real-time stock movements and updates.

4. Compliance Challenges

Inspectors policing large pharma markets are looking in detail at the underlying recordings, systems, and data handling. Data integrity is receiving the highest levels of attention in industry due to the risks of failing to meet the latest regulatory expectations regarding counterfeiting, tampering, and traceability. MES directly lowers the risks of data integrity issues and audit failure and therefore has a huge impact on compliance records.

5. Data Analysis Challenges

The volume of paper-based data collected in a pharmaceutical manufacturing operation is staggering, yet research shows that much of this information is rarely used beyond compliance. Data access with paper systems is at best problematic for assessing current product status or analysing historic batch results. Manufacturers can use MES technologies and the information they provide to understand and improve their processes.

With MES solutions, you gain real-time visibility on operations and processes. Real-time information from the manufacturing process is needed to prevent problems, drive quality, and enable the flexibility your customers require. MES enables this reach into the manufacturing process and is seen as a key requirement for successful Business Process Management.

MES Solutions can Help Address Your Industry Challenges

MES solutions don’t just help you implement manufacturing operations — a superior solution can even help you tackle industry challenges and lead you to outperform competitors. In this article, we summarised some of the key industrial challenges that an MES can help address:

1. Quality Challenges – minimise the cost of quality
2. Production Challenges – ensure it is “Right First Time”
3. Cost Challenges – make better use of your resources
4. Compliance Challenges – lower the risk of data integrity issues
5. Data Analysis Challenges – gain real-time visibility on operations

We hope our article was helpful in highlighting how choosing the right MES technology can help manage these industry pressures. If you would like to learn more about our MES solution or discuss an MES implementation project, please contact our specialist team here.