More and more orders in ever smaller batch sizes and with short lead times: For a pharmaceutical manufacturer from southern Germany, this has led to bottlenecks in production. Faller Packaging is now helping the company to organise the procurement of the required secondary packaging faster, more cost-effectively and more sustainably.
The pharmaceutical and healthcare industry is one of the largest and most dynamic growth markets in the world, with demand for medicines and other pharmaceutical products on the rise. More and more products are coming onto the market in an ever shorter time. This has had a serious impact on the industry's production behaviour: The batch sizes of individual orders are decreasing significantly, while the order quantity is increasing. This results in more frequent changes and changing requirements in the production process. All of this means that the entire supply chain for the manufacture of pharmaceutical products is becoming considerably more complex - including with regard to the procurement of the associated packaging.
Increasing product diversity, decreasing predictability
This challenge was also faced by a pharmaceutical company that manufactures wound care products, among other things, at one of its plants in southern Germany. The increasing demand for the products The production volume at the site also grew steadily year on year - however, without being able to expand capacity on site. An increasing number of orders with small batch sizes and short lead times led to bottlenecks in production, caused unnecessary costs and severely restricted the manufacturer's ability and reliability to deliver.
Complex ordering and inspection processes simplified
The company has long relied on Faller Packaging for the procurement of secondary packaging materials. The packaging manufacturer, headquartered in Waldkirch, Baden-Württemberg, supplied the nearby production site with Folding cartons, labels and package inserts from a single source - However, the customer always submitted a separate order for each product. A labour-intensive and unnecessarily complicated process.
In addition, the pharmaceutical manufacturer all incoming goods had to undergo a strict quality inspection - also the packaging components. However, the area in which the deliveries to be inspected were temporarily stored was limited and regularly overcrowded. This resulted in allocation errors and costly delays due to the inspection department being overloaded.
Together with Faller Packaging, the company set out to make the procurement process simpler, more efficient and faster. The first step was to bundle the orders for folding cartons, labels and leaflets on a product-related basis - instead of three orders, the supplier now only received one. The supplier was able to optimise the so-called KIT orders. to its internal production capacities in the various plants, and then put them together on pallets before dispatch to the customer.
Full control over stocks
The pharmaceutical manufacturer also introduced a vendor-managed inventory (VMI) with its supplier. As a result, Faller Packaging assumed full responsibility for the customer's stocks of its products. The customer shares the stock and sales figures for each item. Instead of orders for individual orders, Faller Packaging receives the information from this data, when which product is needed and in what quantity, and then initiates the corresponding production.
This meant that the specialist was able to deliver the corresponding orders to the customer at short notice and significantly relieve storage capacities on site. By planning raw materials and capacities at an early stage and utilising them efficiently, time and costs can also be saved. The pharmaceutical manufacturer was also able to outsource a significant part of the complexity involved in the procurement of secondary packaging materials, allowing it to focus more on its actual value creation.
To also optimise the quality assurance process, As a Certified Supplier, Faller Packaging took over the testing of the delivered products. This meant that the pharmaceutical manufacturer no longer needed to carry out another inspection in-house. The packaging required for production could be delivered to the packaging line virtually just-in-time after a brief incoming inspection - an enormous time and cost saving. Thanks to its support, Faller Packaging was able to reduce the lead times in the pharmaceutical company's production by an average of 65 per cent and cut its costs by around 400,000 euros.
Source: Faller Packaging
