Piramal Enterprises Limited was requested by a Big Pharma Customer with a proposal for manufacturing a Compound (A) in quantities of 5 Kg followed by a 100 Kg. The team submitted the proposal based on previous experience gained during PoC (Proof of Concept) sample preparation. Piramal Ennore site team got the project to manufacture this critical compound. Previously there were about six stages of this product and overall yield was very low (X %).
It was 9’o clock in the morning when the initial discussion was planned. Site Head started briefing about the project and then turned to the team for something more important-
“Is it possible to choose any shorter synthetic route?”
“Is it possible to optimize the manufacturing friendly reagents for all the conversions?”
“Why can’t we improve the overall yield for the existing route?”
“Why can’t we reduce the consumption of high cost contributing reagents?”
Challenged the Site Head.
Team was in dilemma on how could such a feat be accomplished, the day had just begun. While all the members were trying to find the ideas, a strong voice was raised by R&D team who proposed some points for all the questions raised by the Site Head. R&D Head accepted the proposal and started deriving an action plan with team.
Site Management team wanted to explore the plan, it was suggested to work on Process Development to reduce number of stages which can add additional revenue to the site. During this project, it was important to keep in mind that development activity should not impact project deliverables.
From that day onwards, cross functional team worked around the clock for the task. They formed the design for the experiments and executed lot of runs, explored some alternate reagents. Exactly after six weeks, R&D Head received a call,
“Boss! We made it, Please check your inbox quickly” said the R&D Manager with utter joy.
Finally, all the challenging (not easily scalable at commercial scale) reaction conditions were tuned/optimized as per commercial scale requirement and the consumption of high cost contributing reagents was also reduced (optimized) in lab and then successfully executed in plant. Days were moving faster and then arrived the review. Everyone was looking at Data Analyst for yield numbers.
“Fantastic! Our efforts have paid off!” announced the Site Head.
A remarkable improvement of 27% from the baseline was recorded. The new yield was now (X + 27%). This was a very proud & satisfactory moment for the whole team; all these targets were achieved without affecting the quality, safety and deliverables. Leadership was very happy to see that the team thinks beyond the boundaries and Piramal again created a happy & delighted customer.
Lessons Learned
- There is always scope of improvement for which, challenging the status-quo is most important after that it is all about the creative mindset, planning and consistent efforts to achieve the goal.
- Moral & confidence of team on tackling new challenges improves significantly after being part of such success stories.