The harried director of manufacturing sits at an overflowing desk at his company’s Chicago headquarters as the telephone rings. It’s another supply chain crisis. Parts destined for the plant in China didn’t make it in time. In fact, they’re already several days late.

The call triggers a flurry of anxious questions. Would it be possible to switch production to Singapore? Or how about the Alabama plant? Who has capacity? Will my competitors eat my lunch if I miss these production goals? And really, what can I do to find out about these kinds of problems sooner, in order to avoid these crises altogether?

According to research by the Boston-based analyst company AberdeenGroup Inc., one key is information—specifically, frequently updated details on key performance metrics. Key performance indicators (KPIs) such as quality deviations should be monitored in real time, for example, while operational metrics such as shipment schedule compliance should be measured daily, AberdeenGroup advises.

With the information in hand, manufacturers must then find ways make the data sing. Says Kevin Roach, vice president, software, at heavyweight automation vendor Rockwell Automation Inc., in Milwaukee, “Companies must harmonize their data.” This is not the “four-part harmony” of a barbershop quartet; rather, it’s taking information from many disparate sources that often have differing formats and getting them to sing the same tune so that those understandable key performance metrics may be compiled and displayed.

Roach adds that he’s seen reports predicting that 60 percent of manufacturing information technology (IT) spending this year will be on performance and production management applications. Spending on all the enterprise applications will be down, including enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM) and customer relationship management (CRM). “Those systems are in place,” notes Roach. “Now, the question is, ‘How can they be leveraged for optimum manufacturing?’ Managers have discovered that they can’t implement their ERP and SCM applications because the link to the plant that was promised never materialized.”

Data standardization

Pharmaceutical manufacturer sanofi-aventis, with headquarters in Paris, has plants scattered across many countries that must maintain compliance with many regulations. This requires data standardization in formats recognized by regulators. One of the important products in the company’s portfolio is Altace, a prescription hypertension medication.

The hard, gelatin capsule Altace formulations are just four of the 270 different store keeping units, or SKUs, manufactured at the sanofi-aventis facility in Laval, Quebec, Canada. Each year, the Laval facility produces 450 million capsules, 200 million tablets, 100,000 liters of liquids and more than 150,000 kilograms of ointments and creams.

With the challenges of disconnected and manually intensive processes in place, sanofi-aventis’ managers aimed to improve existing processing methods to boost efficiencies and reduce risk associated with human error. Specifically, the company sought to achieve compliance with U.S. and European pharmaceutical regulations for the next five years—specifically, tracking and controlling certain processes according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s 21 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 11 specifications.

Daniel Huot, technical expert for sanofi-aventis, was looking to improve his general manufacturing practices, while complying with the 21 CFR Part 11 regulation, a rule that applies to electronic records that are created, modified, maintained, archived, retrieved or transmitted under any system.

“I was specifically interested in a management software tool that would give me control over the plant floor. I wanted to know who was doing what, when and why, for my own peace of mind,” says Huot. He identified Rockwell Software Maintenance Automation Control Center, or RSMACC, a collaborative asset management and maintenance tool, as the best software product to help him meet his goals. This was implemented while his company was Aventis, and prior to its 2004 merger with Sanofi-Synthelabo, which formed sanofi-aventis. But new management meant new goals.

Implement standard metrics

Following the merger, each plant was “requested” to implement a key performance metric that measures the evolution of equipment operation and calculates the margin of potential improvement in productivity and quality. The metric, called TRS, considers how well the machine is performing during a production run, along with the effectiveness of the process before and after. It takes into account the setup time of the machine, its operation and the CIP (Clean-in-Place) phase. This generates important information to management, such as ways to better schedule different lots of production, and it justifies personnel training or maintenance interventions.

Huot knew he needed additional IT tools to implement this request, and chose Rockwell Software RSBizWare PlantMetrics as the best solution. The software analyzes the performance of production assets, ...