LAST UPDATED:
10 September 2024
In Global Operations, we turn molecules into medicine.
Across the world, our team plays a pivotal role in every step of a medicine’s journey, from the lab to the patient. From molecules under research and clinical trial settings, all the way through to launching new medicines for supply worldwide.
Investing in our manufacturing and supply chain capabilities to ensure our world class supply performance remains key to our success. However, what’s clear is that we must continue to evolve how we develop, manufacture and supply our medicines.
More than ever, we have an opportunity to transform our global supply network into one that is digitally enabled. When combined with Lean and Operational Excellence, it enables the delivery of new modalities and medicines to patients across the world in record speed and with high reliability and efficiency. Transforming to a network of smart factories that are powered by disruptive technologies will enable us to deliver more medicines to more patients, more quickly.
What is a smart factory?
Smart factories are an interconnected, digitally-enabled supply network that comprises of our development and manufacturing sites, and our end-to-end supply chains, along with our external suppliers and partners.
Learn more about why ‘smart’ means ‘more’ for our Global Operations in the below video:
Across our network, we are testing and deploying digital ‘building blocks’ -- digital solutions that can be quickly embedded into a business process to create value, and where there is an opportunity to optimise, transform or completely disrupt the way we work today.
Over the last 18 months, our global supply chain, IT and HR experts partnered with our sites and identified 12-15 digital building blocks that have the potential to transform our business. By collaborating with leading innovators and technology partners, we are thinking big, starting small and scaling fast. Enabling us to test our digital building blocks in real-world settings to validate business value before scaling them swiftly and securely across our network.
Seven ways we are leveraging the power of digital throughout our end-to-end supply chain
- Digital drug development: In-silico experimentation, digital twin modelling and simulation to accelerate development lead times and reduce waste to benefit our business, patients and planet.
- Advanced and predictive business insights and optimisation: Advanced and predictive analytics to drive greater insight, predict outcomes, and optimise our processes.
- Immersive experiences: Augmented and virtual reality to reduce training lead-time, increase collaboration and improve safety and efficiency.
- Factory dashboards: Analytics and visualisations to empower our people to make rapid patient-centric and sustainable decisions based on real-time data.
- Digital paperwork: Digital work instructions and workflow to improve ‘right first-time’, drive greater efficiency, productivity for our business and our planet.
- Factory flow simulation: Artificial intelligence (AI) to create digital twins that optimise flow through operations to deliver reduced lead time and increased productivity.
- Digital supply chain: Connecting the end-to-end supply chain for enhanced visibility, forecasting and planning to distribute medicines to patients with greater speed and agility and reduced inventory.
Digital solutions, such as AI and data analysis, are embedded into key processes at our Biologics Manufacturing Site in Frederick, Maryland, US
Rapidly industrialising and scaling these building blocks is the heart of our transformation strategy, and at any point in time our portfolio will have a number of solutions in various stages of development from: proof of concept, minimum viable product, industrialised and ready-for-scale. We are steadily building a catalogue of these building blocks, so sites and functions can ultimately access them on demand.
Leading the way with our Digital Lighthouses
Across our Global Operations network, we have identified five ‘digital lighthouse’ sites in diverse geographies, which perform a unique role in our network. In addition to being fully operational manufacturing sites, these key sites take the lead on creating business use cases and testing digital technologies via proofs of concept. Furthermore, these digital lighthouse sites confirm that any data required meets our standards, that we can build the right capability for our teams to deliver and own the products, and that we establish the business processes to enable the digital solution to be used effectively in our routine operations.
In turn, the lighthouse sites empower the rest of the network with insights and learnings on how to scale quickly and capitalise on the value of digital. For example, our digital lighthouse sites in Wuxi and Sweden partnered for over 12 months to accelerate the development of building blocks.
Through the application of data visualisation and advanced analytics solutions, our Wuxi Site has built capabilities to optimise and synchronise production through real time, end-to-end visibility of demand, inventory, order status and process performance. As of 2022, the site now operates with even higher safety, quality and efficiency. Meanwhile, our Sweden Operations is leading the way in reducing complexity and capacity constraints by implementing data visualisation, paperless solutions and advanced optimisation analytics. So far, the site is already seeing an improvement in operational excellence and seeing a new standard for the entire global network.
At AstraZeneca, we have a vision for becoming the world’s first end-to-end optimised pharmaceutical manufacturing supply chain. Our transformation journey will provide manufacturing flexibility, enabling us to become fit for the future and continue our outstanding delivery of medicines for patients.
Bringing digital capabilities to our colleagues
Of course, technology forms only part of our transformation to smart factories. Global Operations is unable to run successfully without highly skilled people, so our people are transforming too – into a digitally enabled workforce, employing digital tools to support them in their work, adopting a culture of lifelong learning and moving from ‘doing digital’ to truly ‘being digital’.
A digital innovation hub in Macclesfield, UK provides employees with an immersive look at how our smart factories operate and offers hands-on experience with how the technologies operate.
To-date, we have upskilled over 2,600 employees in the possibility of what Industry 4.0 technologies can enable, through internal exhibits, interactive training and hands on experience. We are tapping into external collaborations to train in data science, agile and change management, to drive our acceleration journey and to sustain a digital mindset. Importantly, our Operations and IT colleagues have established the first dedicated digital transformation office, bringing in digital networks within each value stream to drive scaling of solutions and generate new ideas.
With the world around us changing rapidly, we are evolving our network, our technology and our capabilities to deliver more medicines, to more patients, more quickly and to build a better, more sustainable future. I am proud of our Global Operations team’s progress in accelerating digital and our work in advancing smart factories to showcase our delivery for our company and for patients.
