MANUFACTURING
The Link between Plant Performance & Maturity Seeing the whole picture Understanding the link between maturity and performance provides a competitive advantage for companies on their way to continuous improvement. This article illustrates the St.Gallen operational excellence (OPEX) model’s concept of site performance and maturity, bringing both perspectives together in a holistic framework. Bernasconi M, Grothkopp M, Pirrone L, Friedli T University of St.Gallen
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harmaceutical plants are increasingly concerned with improving their respective maturity. The numerous initiatives are labelled with terms like ‘lean maturity assessment and improvement’, ‘Quality Management
Maturity Improvement’, etc. What is less clear, though, is if this will have a visible impact on the performance. Plant performance has always been and will always be in the centre of management attention. The true performance of a
system cannot be measured with isolated metrics, but requires a holistic, balanced approach to be assessed and managed (Friedli & Bellm, 2013). In 2002, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the pharmaceutical current good manufacturing practice (cGMP) for the 21st Century initiative. Goal of the initiative was to encourage industry in adopting modern and innovative manufacturing technologies to improve quality, performance, and patient security within the pharmaceutical industry (FDA, 2004). As results, lean thinking and OPEX became not only a suitable instrument to improve operations but also regulatory expectations (Friedli & Bellm, 2013).
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