Haupt Pharma, one of Europe’s leading pharmaceutical contract development and manufacturing organisations, has initiated a comprehensive project to optimise its supply chain. The aim is to further boost the efficiency, quality and monitoring of the supply chain processes as part of a continuous optimisation process. At the same time, economic efficiency is to be increased through the reduction of reject quantities.

In order to show accurate and prompt initial results, Haupt Pharma is collaborating with the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML. This well-known partner organisation has already achieved success with comparable requirements at other major pharmaceutical companies.

"By optimising our supply chain processes, our throughput time will be further reduced and made easier to plan. This will enable us to reduce our lead times and respond even more flexibly to the requirements of our customers. At the same time, we shall reduce our inventory levels. A real win-win situation," says Dr. Hubert Bensmann, the member of the extended management board responsible for, amongst other things, supply chain optimisation and managing director of the Münster site.

"As an institute specialised in all questions relating to integrated logistics and optimisation of production processes, we have already advised on a large number of projects," says Dr. Sebastian Wibbeling, department head of health care logistics at the Fraunhofer IML. "We are looking forward to the exciting challenge and to be able to have Haupt Pharma fully benefit from our expertise."

Using the operational excellence approach as a basis, Haupt Pharma and the Fraunhofer IML will first of all work out a generic, ideal value-added process at two sites. Here the focus will be on the entire supply chain, including supporting process areas, in order to achieve an improvement in process quality and profitability. The improved value-added process will be the basis for process optimisation at the two selected Haupt Pharma sites and, as a next step, at all the remaining sites.