THE OVERVIEW
Capsugel is the world's largest global manufacturer of two-piece capsules used primarily for pharmaceutical and dietary supplement applications, supplying 98% of the United States' prescription pharmaceutical market. Although its Greenwood, SC, plant is the largest capsule manufacturing facility in the world, Capsugel also has nine other plants worldwide and has been in operation since the 19th century. The Greenwood facility is the only Capsugel plant in the U.S. and has 670 employees. Capsugel's parent company is Pfizer, a Fortune 100 global pharmaceutical company.
Capsugel has three main customers - pharmaceutical companies, dietary/vitamin supplement companies, and generic pharmaceutical corporations. It is in a growing market segment and has a dynamic facility that changes monthly.
THE CHALLENGE
Richard Anderson, manager of quality engineering at Capsugel for the last 23 years, received a flyer from Piedmont Technical College about an introductory class to lean manufacturing being taught by SCMEP staff. Since Anderson needed to add quality improvements to Capsugel's operations on a consistent basis to maintain its majority share of the market, he decided to sign up himself and 78 other employees for the Lean Manufacturing 101 session. That was in February 2002. At the class, he met SCMEP Manufacturing Specialist Andy Carr, who represents the Upstate region of South Carolina.
"The one-day Lean class was the second best training session of my life," says Anderson, who has participated in hundreds of classes worldwide. It was surpassed only by a weeklong training session he once attended.
THE SOLUTION
"I thought there was a huge opportunity for us with Lean Manufacturing," said Anderson, who points out how much he enjoyed SCMEP's class format of rotating training time with practical application time. Since the initial class, he and his employees have attended an additional three lean manufacturing classes sponsored by SCMEP and have invited SCMEP staff members to come into the facility and lead lean manufacturing and Value Stream Mapping initiatives. Anderson, along with help from other Capsugel employees, took the information back to the Greenwood facility and put it to good use, reducing time, saving money, and improving performance.
THE IMPACT
As a result of lean implementations, including two Single Minute Exchange of Dies, or SMED, events, Capsugel has noted many improvements and impacts over the last 1½ years, such as:
- Reducing the installation time of new computers from four hours to one hour;
- Reducing the number of open calls coming into the Help Desk from 40 to 20;
- Reducing key changeover time from 56 minutes to 35 minutes (a 37% reduction resulting in $3,700 in annual savings);
- Reducing the amount of time necessary to print capsules, from 93 minutes to 43 minutes (a 54% reduction resulting in $700,000);
- Reducing the time it takes to make a size change on machinery from six hours to one hour;
- Reducing the daily release time from eight hours to five hours in the Work Order Closeout Department (a 38% reduction);
- Reducing paperwork/paper flow origination for customer complaints from four people to just one person;
- Reducing the returned goods authorizations from 30 days to just two days;
- Saving $500,000 in the mold bar manufacturing area, where capsules are made, by implementing a Value Stream Mapping (VSM) initiative;
- Reducing the time to make a set of mold bars from 400 hours to 300 hours, removing millions of feet of steps in the process.
With all the improvements over the last 1½ years, Anderson estimates SCMEP has helped Capsugel save somewhere between $1.5 million and $2 million. Lean improvements are still ongoing and Anderson expects more impacts throughout the next few years.
