Case Studies - GlaxoSmithKline

“Continuous improvement is key to achieving world class maintenance operations at the GlaxoSmithKline site in Jurong, Singapore.”
               
Pharmaceutical companies are continuously improving to ensure that high quality products are delivered to patients at the best possible cost, when they need them. The GlaxoSmithKline facility in Jurong, Singapore manufactures the active pharmaceutical comp­ounds used to treat HIV, hepatitis B, migraine, gastric, chemotherapy and radiotherapy-induced nausea and respiratory diseases.

Back in 1998, as part of the Glaxo Wellcome maintenance strategy development program, Jurong completed an AMIS™ audit. The result, 71%, was an excellent score but the Singapore people were not happy with it. As Tan Kay Yong, managing director of Jurong says, “To stay competitive, you have to keep doing better.”

The main challenge was to bring a near world-class facility to a state of excellence. Achieving this meant focusing on changing the ways of working, and this in turn meant working more closely with production and planning groups and recognizing that maintenance is a key part of the business. Backed by strong support from Kay Yong and senior management, the maintenance team took on the challenge.

One of the first tasks was to explain to the maintenance team why they should change when they were doing well. This was achieved by building the case for change and providing exposure to the wider business picture.

Strong leadership was required to set the overall direction and to ask probing questions of the team about the way they did things. One of the first changes was to bring together the two maintenance teams into one workshop. This had the immediate effect of improving communication, enabling everyone to understand the problems across the site, and providing solutions from a wider pool of experience. It also allowed the resources to be better utilized across the whole site to meet the variations in workload. Another change was the use of activity based costing for maintenance. This allowed the plant to build realistic budgets and better manage its expenditures.

A new CMMS was implemented to replace a non-Y2K compliant system; better planning of work was possible so today 90% of all maintenance work is planned (an increase from 40% in 1998). In part, this was achieved through a closer working relation­ship with the oper­ations department.

Now the results of the changes are beginning to come through. Maintenance costs are reducing/static despite an increase in the number of engineers employed and the cost of maintenance per unit of production is falling. Non-value adding activities are identified and eliminated and the installed systems and technology are being used more effectively to manage maintenance. Engineers’ utilization has also increased.

There is a greater degree of teamwork and cooperation between engineers and operations staff, and the benefits are evident in the excellent appearance of the facility. An AMIS audit in May 2001 resulted in a score of 87%, and yet the Jurong team believes there are still areas for improvement - refining preventive maintenance using risk-based approaches.