Providing a diverse portfolio of pharmaceutical, consumer health and crop science products to millions of customers, Bayer AG is a world-renowned leader in life sciences.
However, maintaining an industry leading global enterprise does not come without challenges.
With as many as 14 sites in Germany alone, each relying on the others by way of complex interconnected supply chains, maintaining efficient performance with so many variables can be extremely difficult.
This challenge is especially pressing on the shop floor of a facility in continuous operation, such as Bayer’s drug substance finishing plant (DSFP) in Charlottenburg, Berlin, part of the wider Supply Center Bergkamen.
Florian Leinenkugel, Digital Project Lead, DSFP Charlottenburg, Bayer AG, explains: “Our shop floor communication used to comprise a patchwork of Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, Teams channels and paper records. On top of this, we had our validated systems for deviation and quality management.”
“Naturally,” he continues, “this meant that information was scattered and key data wasn’t always being communicated between relevant staff members."
"It was for this reason that we decided to consolidate all of our functions into a single tool — a central source of truth to underpin all plant processes.”
Here, the DSFP team looked to process industry software developer, eschbach, and its enterprise manufacturing platform.
With more than 100,000 global users, Shiftconnector is a powerful tool that empowers faster decision-making for shift teams as a result of real-time visibility and connected workflows.
Crucially, it would allow the DSFP team to consolidate more than 20 communication platforms into one system, eliminating siloed information, reducing the volume of time-consuming manual handovers and ensuring maximum transparency between shift teams.
Streamlining shop floor management
With all parties working closely together throughout the onboarding process, eschbach customised the system to the unique requirements of the plant and its staff.
Danny Gorek, Shift Supervisor, DSFP Charlottenburg, Bayer AG, outlines the impact this had on shopfloor management: “In the past, handovers required multiple lists on different platforms to make sure all of the information was accounted for."
"This was time-consuming for both the person completing the handover and the member of staff taking over because they needed to review all of the documents.”
“Now, everything is completed digitally via Shiftconnector. All notifications and tasks are transferred via the shift supervisor function, thereby streamlining communication and eliminating the need for back-and-forth follow-ups."
"On average, I would say that it saves me as much as an hour every single shift by removing the need to maintain multiple lists.”
Towards operational excellence
The ongoing implementation will also allow the plant to enhance its continuous improvement initiatives, with eschbach coding in key plant KPIs such as overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), which will be displayed using a digital dashboard.
To help enhance root cause analysis, the enterprise platform also includes an error log; this allows incidents to be recorded and escalated to the relevant meeting.
Daniela von Hünefeld, Site Head, DSFP Charlottenburg, Bayer AG, elaborates: “For the facility as a whole, we must understand why a production process may have stopped, which is where Shiftconnector can provide a solid basis to our root cause analysis."
"With a clear log of all incidents, we will be able to conduct more structured data analysis to identify patterns and trends, in turn allowing us to make informed decisions.”
She concluded: “Overall, this enterprise manufacturing platform has provided a clear boost to plant efficiency and transparency by unifying our shop floor communication into a singular system."
"This has provided a better workflow structure, decreased manual data collection and provided our staff with more time to conduct more important tasks. It has truly proved to be a major asset to our plant.”
