European Pharma Maintenance Masters » Overview
30th September / 1st October 2010 - Hotel Palace Berlin, Germany
Increasing Operational Excellence & Overall Equipment Efficiency
Like the shy kid at school who never got asked to the big dance, maintenance management always seemed to be the overlooked application on which few pharmaceutical manufacturers were eager to invest much time or money.
“Pharmaceutical companies haven’t put as much emphasis on obtaining efficiencies through maintenance management as some other industries have,” says Colin Masson, research director for chemicals and process manufacturing at AMR Research, an IT research firm in Boston.
No more. Maintenance management still may not be sexy, but it’s suddenly attractive enough to get dates and have some serious money spent on it by the pharmaceutical industry.
“Maintenance management is absolutely becoming more strategic to the enterprise, both from a compliance standpoint and a productivity standpoint,” says Mark Sander, senior director of global information technology for Schering-Plough Corp.'s manufacturing team within the Americas, based in Kenilworth, N.J.
The ISPE Good Practice Guide for Maintenance which provides current, established practices to help achieve technical and regulatory accuracy and cost-effective compliance whether in a new maintenance program or reviewing an existing program for effective strategy and efficiency, underlines the relevance of the topic for the pharmaceutical industry.
Without pharmaceutical maintenance procedures in place, product producers are taking the risk of equipment failures, causing key pieces of machinery to be withdrawn from use. In certain cases, this one piece of equipment may result in the closure of an entire production line. If companies don’t put the proper servicing techniques in place, their equipment is going to fail, or become inconsistent in it's operation. In this state, pharmaceutical maintenance and repair costs will be high, since it will mainly consist of recovering from catastrophic break downs. A good maintenance management system helps a company’s engineering department plan and schedule their work. It also helps them manage spare parts, track who worked on a piece of equipment, and who signed off on it. In order to prevent such incidents, manufacturers of pharmaceuticals are in need of a strategic approach to maintenance, OEE, Operational Excellence and change control management.
The first annual “European Maintain Pharma Masters”, held in Berlin, will discuss strategic approaches to the handling and management of pharmaceutical plants for engineering and maintenance Head Of´s.
The European Maintenance Pharma Masters 2010 is focused on OEE, OPEX, Reliability centered maintenance & FMEA – Failure mode & effects analysis, Cost Control Strategies in maintenance, Effective planning and engineering of new plants, Right First Time, Root Cause Management, Continuous Improvement, Risk based maintenance, Shutdown- & Turnaround management in a GMP & validated environment, Human error prevention in pharmaceutical operations, inspections and audits and embedding of processes in an overall maintenance strategy.
This econique conference provides an excellent opportunity for networking with senior executives of Maintenance, Engineering, Plant Asset & Plant Risk Management, OEE, GMP and Operational Excellence departments and validation from all Pharma-, Biotech & GMP manufacturing companies from all over Europe and will discuss challenges and demands on complex and strategic maintenance activities.
The interactive networking platform of the European Pharma Maintenance Masters will present more than 14 case studies, working groups (regarding OEE & Human Error Prevention) and an evening workshop. At networking zones are optional one-to-one-meetings based on interests and experiences possible.
The participants of the European Pharma Maintenance Masters 2010 gain although access to the online experts circle. This knowledge community allows its participants to adapt their conference agendas to their specific needs by adding one-to-one meetings and informal group meetings with fellow decision-makers. Potential discussion and business partners are easily identified through the extensive online profiles provided. In addition, collaborative work after the conference is heavily supported by numerous features allowing newly formed virtual teams to work together on a variety of topics.
With international Top-speakers at a senior executive level, the European Pharma Maintenance Masters will establish a new approach in finding the right maintenance excellence strategy for pharmaceutical manufacturers worldwide.
