META has announced a collaborative project involving Hospira,
GlaxoSmithKline and CSL aiming to increase the effectiveness of biopharma manufacturing.
The Manufacturing Excellence Taskforce of Australia’s Best
Practices in Biopharma project, announced yesterday, also includes the
University of Melbourne and Hospira, whose Mulgrave site was the first
location to engage with the initiative.
“This is META’s first productivity focused manufacturing
project identified by the pharmaceutical industry, to ensure benefits from the
supply-chain optimisation expertise can be leveraged to deliver major productivity
improvements across a number of Australian pharmaceutical sites,” said the organisation’s managing director Zoran Angelkovski.
The University of Melbourne is providing a team of
post-doctoral experts to help optimise the factory processes of the
participants, with the announcement claiming a three per cent productivity
increase could be achieved in the industry.
“The META Biopharma best practice project will implement a
full review of our manufacturing process, building up valuable knowledge and
performance results relating to material flow, equipment and effective people
resource utilisation” said Andrew Hodder, Vice President of Operations from
Hospira Mulgrave.
“It’s a real opportunity for a group of pharmaceutical
companies who would ordinarily be competitors to come together and share
techniques for increasing efficiency, productivity and ultimately savings.”
For more on META’s Biopharma hub, click here.
Image: Paolo Toscani/fotolia