Over a five year period we helped one of the most profitable, technically proficient chemical companies in the world implement a formal Operational Excellence programme. This programme has transformed the way operations are managed and has made a significant contribution to improving and maintaining the financial margins of the group. What made this programme unique was the fact that it was not characterised by the usual "corporate-chest–beating" or the large consulting budgets normally associated with these types of initiatives. Confidence was built, project-by-project over a period of three years, at which time implementation of Operational Excellence was rolled out across the company. This programme has been fully internalised and a significant investment has been made in terms of internal resources to accelerate the rate of organisational change and take the programme to even higher levels of success.

The use of innovative design management principles resulted in the new plant being introduced ahead of schedule and below budget despite the challenge of using alpha technology, this project was at the time a benchmark for this internationally renowned pharmaceutical company.

After a period of impressive, early-stage commercial performance, this European based API manufacturer of long chain molecules developed "pathological" operational problems. We worked with them to develop a rescue strategy and implementation plan. The productivity was doubled and the financial health of the plant was restored – They delivered a 20 million euro improvement in the cost of operations over a three year period.

Using innovative processes and project management tools we helped develop a new process for managing the introduction of new projects into a division manufacturing small molecule chemical products – this new process was used as an exemplar and standardised for the entire life science group.

We are currently implementing Quality by Design for a manufacturer of Peptide APIs.

Using a proprietary based approach to managing complexity we facilitated the development of a new strategy for:

• The R&D division of a successful bio-technology company.
• The quality section of a Swiss based chemical group.
• The operations team of an international bio-pharmaceutical manufacturer.

LSA are currently engaged in helping a leading school of chemical engineering redesign their curriculums in order that they are aligned with FDA’s cGMP vision for the pharmaceutical and life science sector. We have also been asked to deliver advanced skills training in the field of Quality By Design.

LSA developed a foundational problem solving course for a leading life science group – this course is currently being used to train the entire workforce.

Using innovative design principles we helped a company redesign a brown-field factory to meet the changing needs of their business environment. The result of this process was a drastically reduced cost for the design process and a design that enabled the company to realign themselves with an increased market demand without having to move the plant to an alternative site. Importantly, in view of their capital constraints, we produced the design in a modular fashion. This has enabled the plant to be upgraded in a coherent manner as and when capital becomes available.

LSA conducted a rigorous trouble-shooting review for a failing North American chemical plant. We identified a number of systemic problems and recommended a turnaround plan. Most of the recommendations have been accepted and the plant made a profit for the first time in its history in 2009.

This pilot plant was losing money so we were asked to conduct a base-lining exercise in order to discover opportunities to improve profitability using industrial engineering. A range of improvement projects were sponsored as a result of this work and the plant was restored to profitability.

LSA helped develop a new organisational structure for a global producer of small scale molecule products. Our design was based on cybernetic principles. This process has provided a new language and framework for making future organisational changes and has been fully assimilated into the management culture.

We assisted an R&D team engaged in developing mammalian cell technology redesign the process for developing new cell lines. The new process resulted in a step change in productivity – cell lines are now developed on a dramatically compressed timeline which has significant benefits for their customers.

Using lean-manufacturing principles we have created a number of lean labs within life sciences. Dramatic improvements in cycle time were recorded and the labs are no longer the system bottlenecks that they have previously been.

This new process design was congruent with the FDA’s vision for cGMP production in the Twenty-First century.

We have recently completed two asset-management projects in two different pharmaceutical plants. These projects have resulted in substantial cost savings leading to consulting charges being recouped in under four months.

A pharmaceutical company needed our support to establish a maintenance plan in order to improve the effectiveness of its management system and comply with FDA requirements. Over a period of six months we established a maintenance plan for the facilities operation and the associated utilities based on the reliability centred maintenance method.

We delivered project support to a global manufacturer of medical devices. The project involved the roll out of a CMMS for the operation sites globally. We provided general CMMS services, software testing and validation, definition of workflow, recording of corrective maintenance with failure codes and management reports including standardised key performance indicators.

We have implemented a number of projects that have significantly improved management’s ability to control their processes. For many of these projects we have used mathematical models to improve process understanding. These models range from simple univariate statistical process control, to the more difficult multivariate statistical models and advanced artificial neural networks.