The Pharmaceutical Industry's Digital Transformation Story | Birgi Mefar Succeeded
About the Company
The Birgi Mefar Group, which began with the founding of Birgi Sanayi A.Ş. in 1963 and has grown rapidly, today comprises divisions specializing in the production of primary glass packaging for sterile pharmaceuticals, sterile pharmaceutical manufacturing services, and pharmaceutical distribution services. Birgi Sanayi manufactures ampoules and vials as primary glass packaging, while Mefar İlaç Sanayi operates as a service provider for the production of sterile injectable pharmaceuticals.
The Birgi Mefar Group began its digital transformation efforts approximately ten years ago and has aimed to become one of the industry’s leading companies, particularly in the areas where it produces sterile injectable medications. By investing in smart technologies to improve its production and supply chains, the Group has integrated digital platforms into its operations and focused on optimizing the customer experience, production efficiency, and costs.
Halit Gündüz
Reasons for the Need
Various factors influenced Birgi Mefar’s decision to embrace digital transformation:
- The goal of becoming a smart enterprise: Birgi Mefar has resolved to become the smartest enterprise developed and nurtured in Turkey. To achieve this goal, three main components were required: a smart application layer, smart technology, and a presence on digital platforms.
- The need for operational control and reliability: The company sought to manage its production operations instantly and in real time, exercise better control, and prove itself to be a reliable firm to both the Turkish industry and its customers.
- Regulatory requirements and other obligations: The fact that the pharmaceutical industry is less deregulated than other sectors, along with external factors such as regulatory requirements, global audits, and quality standards, has made digital transformation a necessity. Reliability and zero margin for error are of critical importance, particularly in irreversible processes such as the production of injectable products.
- Increased efficiency and cost reduction: The goals are to ensure that every department within the company achieves the right results, to increase efficiency, to streamline decision-making processes, to reduce operating costs, and to minimize compliance costs.
- Listening to employees: The goal was to understand the challenges faced by people who work hard and produce a lot but struggle to explain what they produce, how they produce it, and what difficulties they encounter, and to build closer relationships with them.
- Complex production structure: As a contract manufacturer working with nearly 100 customers and close to 200 different products, the requirement to operate production lines at 100% capacity has made manual tracking and monitoring extremely cumbersome. This complexity created the need to monitor everything online and collect data.
- Effective use of time: Since time is of the utmost importance in the pharmaceutical industry, the need to use time correctly and efficiently was a key factor in the decision to digitize.
Motivation for Choosing and Important Details
The key motivations and important details behind Birgi Mefar’s decision to choose ProManage for its digital transformation journey are as follows:
- Transparency and reliable data: The key expectations were that the selected systems be highly transparent and open, use reliable data, operate without any external interference, and offer online traceability.
- Board of Directors and Team Motivation: The ability of the entire team, including the board of directors, to align behind a common goal ensured that decisions were made quickly. This situation demonstrates how firmly the company’s strategy is established and how a 32-year sense of belonging within the company fosters such cycles.
- Integration with existing systems: It was noted that IoT technologies such as ProManage are critical for the efficient use and integration of existing enterprise systems.
- The Importance of Experience: Halit Gündüz’s experience with similar systems at Abdi İbrahim underscored the importance of digital transformation at Birgi Mefar as well. The OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) target of over 70 percent achieved there has been established as a standard for Birgi Mefar as well.
- The Need for Flexibility, Integration, Transparency, and Speed: Overall, the growing needs of the pharmaceutical industry have led Birgi Mefar to prefer systems with a flexible, integrated, transparent, and fast infrastructure. They have noted that ProManage provides these features.
Personal Experiences
The experiences Birgi Mefar has encountered and managed during the digital transformation process are as follows:
- Integration of ERP and other systems: The company ensured the integrated use of systems such as SAP, Q-DMS (quality management system), LIMS (laboratory information management system), and Maximo (maintenance management system).
- Real-time monitoring of production processes: After the ProManage system was implemented, all details—including the efficiency of machines (packaging, production, and tablet machines), maintenance, repairs, cleaning, and production times—began to be monitored in real time.
- Performance tracking and improvement through training: By analyzing the OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) charts for each machine, performance differences between shifts were identified, and operators with low performance received specialized on-the-job training. This approach ensured that operators did not react negatively to digitalization but instead embraced it enthusiastically.
- Automated Maintenance Scheduling: Tracking maintenance intervals—which technicians previously performed manually and which were prone to human error—has been automated with ProManage. The system automatically tracks working hours, sends an automatic email via Outlook when a maintenance time approaches, and triggers an alarm when the time has passed.
- Employee engagement and motivation: A positive change has occurred as employees have come to recognize the benefits provided by the system (such as seeing their own performance and having the opportunity to improve their work). In particular, operators using data from the system to propose their own improvement suggestions has reflected the company’s evolving culture.
- Rapid decision-making mechanisms: While manual data collection previously took 24 hours, reports can now be generated in five minutes and evaluated during daily (or even hourly) meetings, enabling swift action.
- Visual management (Andon): By increasing the number of visual management systems such as Andon in the facility, department employees (both blue- and white-collar) can see their current status in real time, which has become a significant source of motivation.
What Has ProManage Brought?
ProManage has made significant contributions to Birgi Mefar:
- Operational efficiency and control: Production operations are now managed instantly and in real time using digital tools based on an IoT infrastructure. Operational management efficiency has been enhanced through the use of smart factory applications. It has been noted that simply beginning to monitor machines has resulted in at least a 10 percent improvement. This is because when employees saw their own performance metrics, they began to offer suggestions for improvement.
- Cost savings:
- Time savings: In line with the principle that “time is money,” the systems have ensured the effective use of time.
- Labor savings: Greater production capacity has been achieved with the same number of employees.
- Reduced need for new investments: By increasing OEE—for example, by shifting from three shifts to two—production capacity was expanded without requiring new investments, resulting in significant cost savings.
- Increased machine efficiency (OEE): The efficiency of machine utilization has been improved. In the pharmaceutical industry, the OEE target was set at a minimum of 70%, or even 75%, and these targets were achieved.
- Increased production and profitability: By increasing machine capacity utilization rates and the amount of machine usage throughout the day, sales were boosted, which directly translated into higher profitability.
- Quality and error reduction: The use of unreliable data has been prevented through the use of reliable data and online monitoring, which is of vital importance, particularly in critical areas such as the production of sterile injectable drugs.
- Improvement of maintenance processes: Thanks to automated maintenance tracking, maintenance schedules have been freed from manual errors, and maintenance delays have been prevented.
- Lean production and continuous improvement (Kaizen): Thanks to SMED practices, mold changeover and cleaning times have been minimized, thereby allocating more time to value-added production. The collected data was not only used for monitoring but also to generate solution recommendations and initiate continuous improvement (Kaizen) activities.
- Employee motivation and competency development: Operators were able to view their performance, propose improvements to their own work processes, and actively engage with the system. Operators’ competencies were enhanced through targeted on-the-job training.
- Competitive Advantage: It is noted that the use of such systems shifts the competitive balance, and choosing not to use them is considered risky. The system has become an industry-wide necessity, providing the company with a significant competitive advantage.
Results
Birgi Mefar’s decision to choose ProManage was shaped by its strategic vision to “become the smartest business this country has ever produced”. This digital transformation initiative has delivered tangible benefits such as time and cost savings in operational processes, an increase in machine overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), and online traceability. Most importantly, through employees’ active participation in the system and their motivation, a culture of continuous improvement has been reinforced, serving as a strategic step that has shifted the balance in the industry by enhancing the company’s competitive strength.
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