Resources: Library

Welcome to our Thought Leadership Library. Downloading items from this area will require that you complete a short information form.

Read:

*Whitepaper: APS Failed: A New and Better Way to Run Your Factory
Summary: For manufacturers with process and demand variability, hundreds or thousands of products, and shared assets, advanced planning and scheduling (APS) systems have failed to deliver promised benefits. This paper explores five fatal flaws of APS and how Lean Planning and Scheduling (LPS) solutions address those critical shortcomings and ensure production meets real-time demand.

*Whitepaper: Think Your Lean Diet is Right for You? Think Again ...
Summary: In manufacturing environments with variable demand and processes, shared equipment and changing product mixes, a Kanban system of cards breaks down quickly. Without some type of pull, Lean becomes difficult if not impossible, to implement. This paper addresses four “flavors” or variations of pull that enable today’s manufacturers to reap the benefits of Lean Manufacturing in complex environments.

*Whitepaper: Supercharging ERP for Manufacturing Performance in Complex Environments
Summary: This paper describes how performance optimization solutions in complex manufacturing environments can extend ERP to not only drive, but also sustain improvements in key performance areas.

*Whitepaper: Processing Lean: Modifying Traditional Techniques for Complex Environments
Summary: Implementing Lean techniques in complex environments requires new tools and techniques as compared to traditional high-volume environments.

*Executive Summary: Performance Optimization Survey Results
Summary: Invistics’ survey of more than 100 pharmaceutical manufacturers indicates today’s pharmaceutical manufacturers are looking for new way to boost results from performance improvement initiatives and technologies already in use. In fact, less than half of the respondents in the March 06 survey reported satisfactory results from initiatives like Lean and Six Sigma or technologies including ERP and inventory optimization.

View:

*Graph: Manufacturing Performance Metric by Industry

Listen:

*Webinar: AMR and Invistics Present Optimizing the Factory to Strengthen the Supply Chain
Recorded: March 16th, 2006
(NOTE: This WebEx presentation requires the viewer supplied here.)

Summary: Today’s process manufacturers face tremendous pressure to be more responsive, more agile and better connected to the supply chain than ever before, but they’re plagued by rising costs, poor demand visibility, and high variability in products and processes. Hundreds or even thousands of products sharing the same, expensive equipment lends a level of complexity to the supply chain that hasn’t been addressed by traditional techniques and tools such as Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, ERP or SCM systems. Listen to this webinar to learn more about the critical role plants must play in evolving today’s broken supply chains to global demand-driven networks.

*Interview: Operational Excellence: Straight Talk from BMS' Wellemeyer
Recorded: October 11th, 2005

Summary: How does a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant marked for closing transform itself into a corporate model (and home to Pharmaceutical Manufacturing's 2005 Team of the Year)? Lean, 5-S and Factory Physics were all important, but people made the real difference. Listen in as John Wellemeyer, director of Bristol-Myers Squibb's Indiana Technical Operations, shares best practices.

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