How to make a virtue out of necessity
Interlinking of supplier and customer minimizes costs

The tablet production of Novartis in Singapore might quickly evolve into a real showpiece project. In a completely new development and with a low budget, the giant pharmaceutical company has built a plant which operates according to the principles of lean manufacturing and produces the same high quality as the other production units. One of the recipes for success: the company concentrates all the electrical distribution and building automation technology on one single manufacturer. This approach to the integration of a large number of different individual systems and the exceptional teamwork between the final customer and the supplier opens up unimagined savings potentials.
Christine Eckert
The Biopolis of Asia: Singapore carries this proud epithet for a good reason. The city state in South-East Asia, as an up-and-coming pharmaceuticals location, is already home to 20 biopharmaceutical production plants. In October, a further global player joined the illustrious circle. The secondary manufacturing plant of the Swiss company went into operation at Tuas Biomedical Park (TBP). There, in future, about 150 employees will produce the final forms of various pharmaceuticals for a worldwide market.

Trump card: one-stop-shopping

With just a small budget and using only a few members of the company’s own staff, the target of this strategic project was to build a plant which corresponds to the technological state-of-the-art and the high quality requirements of pharmaceuticals manufacturing (GMP, FDA). This required some rethinking of course — also from Dr. Joachim Zobel, the responsible Senior Automation Engineer: “The task was to find a way of creating the necessary technology at a much lower cost. Additional this basic approach had to enable the coordination of electrical distribution and building automation technology by a single lead engineer on the client side.” This could not be accomplished by the traditional procedure where the planning and assembly is carried out with a separate team for every system. What could be done? The only possibility: An overall solution which covers the complete electrical distribution and building automation technology with all interfaces between the individual systems. The problem: There are not many companies who are able to offer such a comprehensive package as a “one-stop-shop”. The contract was finally awarded to Schneider Electric Singapore and its local subsidiary TAC. The open building management system from TAC serves as the overlapping integration platform for all sub-systems: Power supply including UPSs, HVAC control, clean room monitoring and door interlocking system, power monitoring, alarming systems coupled with a pager system, control of all infrastructure units, access control and time recording system, surveillance with CCTV, clock system, fire detection and evacuation systems and the LAN infrastructure for office and process installations including a Voice-over-IP telephony system.

The early bird catches the worm

“In order to compile such a large package, relatively complicated inquiries must be produced. Here, it was necessary to itemise, in easily comprehensible language, who has to make which documents and tasks for each individual system. This is the core factor of the whole idea,” Zobel explained. The pharmaceutical manufacturer deliberately involved its supplier at a very early stage of the project. The advantage here was that a large volume of system-specific know how from the supplier side could flow into the design in order to integrate each system not only quickly but also optimally. This was a vital time-saver, then it became evident that, with the right specialists in the team, the design process could be carried out in roughly ten working days per system during the pre-detail design phase. “The project was so successful because we transferred a great deal of responsibility to Schneider Electric and TAC and integrated them in our teams,” Zobel stresses. “A large amount of the necessary communication could thus be taken over by the supplier himself. The project leaders first came to me only if a larger problem had cropped up or if there was a fundamental decision to be made.”

Engineering “made-to-measure”

It was of decisive importance for the optimisation of the engineering that one basic team — supported by the appropriate system specialists — carried out the design and implementation work system for system. There was therefore not a separate team for each individual system. This greatly simplified the coordination of the comprehensive package and also the design of the interfaces between the individual systems.

The result of this cooperation partnership with the system supplier: more than 50 percent savings in detail engineering and documentation — a total savings of 9,400 man hours. In view of stretched personnel resources and a worldwide acute shortage of qualified engineers, this was a large plus. If specialists were needed TAC simply flew them in from all over the world. “The team grew and shrunk depending on the requirements. If this had not been the case, due to the many last minute alterations, we would have fallen far behind our schedule,” Zobel said. “But the company has very committed, extremely flexible and capable manpower at its disposal and we finished on time.”

The strategy of relying on comprehensive packages and an early integration of the system suppliers certainly paid dividends. In the end, the project costed even less than the deliberately low budget. Zobel is convinced: “In reality, using such an approach, one will rarely obtain the absolute optimum for each and every system which is available on the market. Here though, it is also the task of the client to take a very critical look at his own requirements and cut these back to the necessary level. This procedure serves its purpose and will become the standard. Another global player is already building a similar plant in Singapore with Schneider Electric and TAC according to our model.”n