Pfizer Transforms Its Operations with Digitization

Pfizer Global Supply (PGS) produces more than 23 billion doses of medicine every year across its network of 42 global manufacturing sites. Those global operations set out on a new journey in 2016 when the president of PGS wanted to make a great organization even better. The goal? To support the Pfizer purpose of “breakthroughs that change patients’ lives” by transforming operations into a seamless, data-driven insight engine that drives world-class performance.

But this would be no simple task. PGS manufacturing facilities, representing a heritage of more than 30 legacy pharmaceutical companies, had a diverse ecosystem of systems and datasets, as well as differing process and equipment standards. Insights were difficult to ascertain. And changing the range of solutions used at the operational technologies (OT) layer would be a complex, multiyear effort.

A Blank-Slate Approach

When developing its digital transformation strategy, PGS took the time to understand its business challenges and the technology landscape across the industry.

“We said, OK, if we could take a blank slate and start over, what would this look like if we started today and we didn’t constrain ourselves to what we’ve been doing?” shares Mike Tomasco, vice president, Digital Manufacturing, Pfizer.

This approach, combined with strong executive sponsorship, helped the organization craft a vision that was all-encompassing and a strategy focused on delivering value.

Meanwhile, as this work was happening, a PGS operational excellence group was in the midst of an initiative focused on migrating PGS operations to a lean manufacturing mindset.

“When we got together, it was very quick for all of us to notice these things were complementary to one another and they enabled each other,” Tomasco notes. “The idea of creating a new organizational structure for how you want your plant to run, or new processes and codifying how standard work is done, could be greatly enhanced through digital capabilities.”

Starting with Security

The first step wasn’t to roll out new technology. It was to upgrade and improve the security infrastructure across manufacturing sites. This created a standardized way for PGS to not only better secure the plant network, but also help unlock shop-floor data from outside the site.

The digital transformation program initially followed agile development methods while maintaining a legacy approach to the company’s solution development life cycle for regulatory compliance. But eventually, the agile practices needed more structure to support the scale of the team and the number of products being developed and deployed. The team selected the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) organization and workflow methodology for more structured agility.

With the arrival of COVID-19, the firm rolled out digital solutions that allowed teams to continue face-to-face meetings while staying socially distant. Remote collaboration tools like Vuforia Chalk from Rockwell Automation Strategic Alliance Partner PTC were deployed across the global enterprise within a two-week window. This allowed manufacturing site employees to connect with global subject matter experts through the use of smart glasses and mobile phones.

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“When you’re commissioning manufacturing equipment, sometimes you need experts from different locations and engineering,” Tomasco explains. “And they can now connect in and third parties can come in and work together on making sure that process continues, even during a pandemic. It’s amazing.”

Successes to Date

While its digital transformation journey continues, PGS has documented major improvements to-date in areas like cycle time, manufacturing throughput and yield, and right-first-time quality. At just one manufacturing site, the digital transformation program has been credited with enabling the manufacture of 3 million additional doses of one product above what was planned for in 2019.

Something that’s helped drive the success of the program has been a willingness to explore new ideas and possibilities.

“Every time someone comes to me with a wild idea, it’s typically a, ‘Yes, go try that,’” Tomasco says. “And oftentimes, they don’t understand why we didn’t have a committee to try to decide that.”

And while the team moved quickly in instances like deploying remote collaboration tools, it also proved that “digital” doesn’t always need to mean “fast.”

“You’ve got to methodically plan this out and think, in three years, how am I going to benefit from this?” he says. “And that’s where we’re at now. We’ve been plotting out those foundational layers. And the ability and the rate and pace of what we can do now is now going up exponentially, because we’ve taken the time to build that foundation.”

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