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Abstract

The purpose of this project was to improve the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (GEE) Availability of blister line 10 through four continuous improvement projects: Tamper Evident Machine Upgrades, Redundant Print Registration Sensor, Leak Testing Parameter Change, and Centerline. These projects were assigned from AstraZeneca which is a global biopharmaceutical company that develops and distributes medicine accountable for numerous diseases. The AstraZeneca site located in Mt. Vernon, Indiana is the biggest in the Americas and primarily manufactures Type 2 diabetes medicine. Capital intensive sectors such as the pharmaceutical sector rely on high investments to achieve high profits, therefore it is important for AstraZeneca to optimize production lines. In return, the company will achieve cost-savings, minimize wastes, and guarantee a return on investments. The Tamper Evident (TE) Machine Upgrades was to help improve with downtime issues by upgrading parts of the machine that targeted carton jams, carton damage, debris buildup, and servomotor faults. It is calculated to improve the availability of line 10 by 3%. The Redundant Print Registration Sensor project targeted a defect in the blister cards specifically an excessive amount of shift in the print, causing product information to be cutoff when leaving the thermoformer. The new redundant sensor would automatically catch this excessive shift before it would be cutoff. This resulted in a cost avoidance since it would eliminate the possibility of downtime due to redress events, or when finished blister cards are pulled from the warehouse to be inspected of defects. The leak testing parameter change project was to prove that the leak test time length can be reduced from 10 minutes to 90 seconds without affecting the probability of detecting defects due to pinholes or cracks. After performing tests under different pressures and time frames, the failure rates of the weak sealed blister cards appeared similar and were also proven to be statistically equivalent. This resulted in the implementation of the new leak testing time of 90 seconds and would save approximately 432 hours of time for the operators per month. Centerline was implemented as a lean initiative to help reduce changeover time by visualizing the critical adjustments operators change in between product change.

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