CSL facilitated the most recent benchmarking session of Asset Management Programs (AMP) with ten peer pharmaceutical companies in September 2023. Prior to the session, CSL sent a survey to potential participants, requesting feedback on the topics to discuss. The participants agreed on two topics: Predictive Maintenance (PdM) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
The conversations were held over three sessions, totaling almost five hours of collaboration. There was a very open and transparent exchange of information by all participants. Some participants chose to present their company’s success or challenges with a particular topic. Each of the three sessions had a highly engaged open discussion and Q&A portion.
Although too many to detail in this blog, some of the presentations are highlighted below:
One expert shared the challenges faced in establishing an advanced predictive maintenance center across global sites. The goal was to establish a playbook and PdM hub to assist all sites and improve asset performance by doing the correct maintenance at the optimal time (ideally ahead of failure). Some of the challenges included the variations of site expertise, a typical challenge faced by most multi-national facilities. As such, standardization was very difficult to achieve, and economies of scale leveraging has been hard. In addition, different internal stakeholder groups did not see the need for this effort. However, the effort continues as it was intended to create opportunities for centralized processes, including data consolidation and analysis, tech support from installation, system startup, and post installation monitoring.
Another expert presented on establishing sensor-based predictive maintenance technology. The main goals were to reduce maintenance costs by up to 25% and have a 5-15% uptime gain. One of the challenges faced in this effort was that original equipment manufacturers (OEM) had their own applications for data storage, making it difficult to harmonize data collections hubs throughout the company. The effort continues and requires a lot of collaboration with both customers and large automation system suppliers.
While each participating company was reflecting on their own unique journey, the following additional topics stood out as highlights from the benchmarking sessions:
- Predictive Maintenance Organizational Structures
- Benefits/challenges of global vs local governance
- Managing budgets for PdM investments
- Predictive Maintenance Justification
- How to build a business case for PdM
- Utilizing a pilot to prove out benefits
- Challenges with Implementing Predictive Maintenance and KPIs
- Companies are working through similar challenges on both topics
- Brainstorming techniques to overcome these challenges
- Types of Metrics
- Financial, maintenance, asset value, etc.
- Determining benchmarks and targets for each metric
- Sourcing and Compiling Data
- Using a data hub to contextualize and clean data
- Managing multiple data sources and poor data quality
- Scalability of Metrics across the Organization
- Aligning metrics to business objectives
- Creating KPIs that allow for site comparisons
All participating companies were keen to continue the discussions on a semiannual or annual basis. CSL has agreed to continue to facilitate these discussions, with support from the ISPE SCOPE CoP Steering Committee. The next session is targeted for Spring 2024. If you or your company are interested in participating or if you have a topic idea to suggest for a future session, please send an email to communities@ispe.org and we will contact you with more information.
