Manufactoring and Resource Efficiency

About the award

This Award is to recognise the company or individual operating unit that can demonstrate world class manufacturing performance or the most successful improvement to its manufacturing performance involving demonstrable excellence and/or significant improvements to resource efficiency within the manufacturing process.

Judges were impressed by Ulverston’s continuous improvement programme, focussed around Kaizen workshops and championing individuals ideas. This has resulted in a production increase of 12 million tablets at the same time as significantly reducing solvent use and opex costs and avoiding additional capital expenditure.

GSK Ulverston manufactures the Cefuroxime Sodium API within the Zinnat Supply Chain. The aim at GSK Ulverston is to ensure its products are accessible across the globe, in the areas they are needed the most, to treat infectious diseases. The oral antibiotics (Cefuroxime Axetil) at Ulverston are manufactured utilizing a spray drying process. As the molecule is temperature sensitive, it can limit some of the process efficiencies normally associated with this processing method.

At the ZSC site, there is a strong continuous improvement (CI) culture which is a key attribute to achieving ambitious efficiency improvement targets. Ideas are proactively identified and reported using a central system which are focused on reducing waste of all types across the business.

A dedicated, competent, highly focused team of process managers, control system engineers, process engineers, and technical engineers embarked on a program to:

• Stabilize the process.
• Improve robustness.
• Remove variability.

This work would ensure the site could meet its challenging manufacturing targets as it transitioned out of the network ensuring the patient at the end of the supply chain was not impacted by the closure of the site.

The team embarked on a continuous improvement program of work utilizing lean sigma tools and Process Capability Analysis (CpK) of historical plant performance to:

1. Identify problems.
2. Generate potential solutions.
3. Choose a solution.
4. Implement the solution.
5. Evaluate results.

The ongoing improvement program demonstrated year on year improvements in process efficiency and make volumes. These improvements increased the process efficiency from quarter 1 of 2021 from 88.7% to a demonstrated process efficiency of 93.6% in quarter 4 2023.

This improvement in efficiency and plant capability yielded an additional 12 million 500 mg tablets distributed to an additional 1 million patient packs across the globe.

As a consequence of the site downsizing, the ability to recover solvents ceased. Therefore, acetone has become a key operating expense and waste solvent. Over the same period of improvements, the team looked at the management and utilization of this key solvent. Adopting the same approach, the team successfully reduced the acetone used in the process. When comparing pure volumes, the site has reduced acetone consumption from 2022 to 2023 by 131,000 litres. As the API volumes have also increased, this reduction in acetone has reduced the volume of acetone used to manufacture 1kg of antibiotic from 9.7 litres to 5.3 litres.

At Ulverston, the team is continuously looking to identify improvements which positively impact both the patients receiving life-saving medicines and the environment in which they live. Improvements to date, within a challenging environment, demonstrate the fantastic individuals at ZSC. There is confidence in achieving the company’s commitments, making the world a safer place.