Bayer Consumer Care, a consumer health company, has signed a global non-expiring licensing agreement to use the enterprise:inmation software of inmation Software, specialists in the field of global real-time information management in large-scale industry.
The substance of the licensing agreement is unlimited use of the software for establishing a cross-system real-time information infrastructure at all Bayer Consumer Care production sites across the globe.
Furthermore, Bayer Consumer Care has become a member of the Product Advisory Board at inmation. This is the platform for inmation users from different industry segments to regularly interact with the software vendor to ensure that future product features are aligned to future needs.
According to Bayer Consumer Health, the drive behind finalising this contract was the division’s wish to push forward with digitalisation at its formulation and packaging production sites.
Key for the digitalisation strategy (Digital@CHPS) in consumer health product supply was to have a software solution that enables the gathering of process and production data across the globe in a cross-system and component like manner, in real-time and in a model-based system.
The enterprise:inmation software, which specialises precisely on these requirements, came into focus after continuous monitoring of the technology market and interaction with industry peers.
In production, the OTC sector resembles the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry more than pharmaceuticals and this is why Bayer is making strict requirements on standards in automation, rollout speed and system flexibility. Under the generic term of just-in-time production of consumer products, production must be able to clear bottlenecks and respond speedily and flexibly to order changes.
The capability for the fast and easy global rollout of enterprise:inmation software is based on two central capabilities. The software is minimally invasive, and can easily integrate with existing systems such as ERP, MES, BDE, SCADA/HMI, PLS and SPS, and can easily be adapted to current systems.
Also, the software pursues a highly scalable approach in which there is complete freedom of choice as to what level and detail systems are integrated into the overall real-time backbone.
The resulting data landscape forms the basis on which information can be scaled and used in a needs and web-based manner in real-time – from corporate management to an individual production line, across locations and with any device. Once the system is installed, fully automated updates of all components can be controlled via central administration without the necessity for exhausting migration projects.
“In enterprise:inmation, we have found exactly the right software for driving forward our Digital@CHPS strategy. It fits to our needs and this is the reason why we are moving straight to the global rollout without any intense piloting. It is fit to legacy, is as fast moving as our business and is able to handle in real-time the global data of our systems and installations with its thousands of assets in a lean and speedy fashion” said Marcel Staudt, Head of Engineering at Bayer Consumer Health Division.
