Lean Engineering for Pharmaceutical Plants - A Praxis Oriented Approach for a Lean Engineering and Realization Process

To plan and to operate a pharmaceutical venture is an investment and therefore under stringent economic, technical and regulatory pressure. Same as for manufacturing itself, also for engineering, time, money and resources have to be optimized as far as possible. Applying "lean" means to establish a holistic mindset that helps to systematically identify and eliminating wastes. This presentation considers the principles of how to apply this mindset on engineering and realisation of pharmaceutical installations. The most common traps that usually create wastes are shown. An analysis of the lifecycle of engineering demonstrates the advantages of a rolling planning that automatically realizes necessary corrections of work in progress; this in contrary to a so called ballistic behaviour that requires the maximum accuracy in the beginning of planning tasks and its progressing work is not being changed until finished. The maxim of putting the engineering itself under the lean concept will naturally support the result of the planning: A lean plant concept for lean manufacturing.