A global pharmaceutical company’s manufacturing facility in Singapore, is one of the company’s primary manufacturing sites under the Group, and is responsible for the global supply of its pharmaceutical active ingredients.

Supply Chain Crisis Situation:

The Assignment – Planned Plant Shutdown

The Singapore plant has experienced exceptional growth over recent years and is strategic to the region, operating with a lean structure of 180 employees department.

A decision was taken and immediate action to appoint an external transition manager to support the planned plant closure. The Plant Manager adds: “We needed to put ourselves in the best position to be able to cope with the task in hand, and taking on a transition manager with significant hands-on experience seemed the most sensible route to take.”

The transition manager would need to be completely immersed and involved from the outset, supporting the technical team in running the operation during the plant shutdown.

Solution

The key objectives of the transition manager would be to lead and guide the E&I Maintenance team, quickly understand the role of the mechanical engineering team and to get up-to-speed on the process for the maintenance shutdown. The transition manager appointed would need to ensure quality reports would be delivered according to the schedule, and project timelines were met.

What was also outlined was the fact that the appointed individual would not have to have a pharma or maintenance background.

Within days of being briefed, X-PM identified Salem Belmeguenai.

Salem Belmeguenai

X-PM brought in Salem Belmeguenai, to run this project Salem has more than 29 years’ experience working across high technology industries, specifically the semi-conductor market, in France, the UK, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, ranging from operations, project management, quality and reliability assurance, to general management.

He has a history of successfully implementing world-class manufacturing practices to align operations with company objectives.

Results

Successful Outcomes

  • The planned plant closure was successful and ran on time
  • Developed specific metrics to identify the skill of employees to do the job, and the required training needs
  • Implemented new KPI’s to track technical department performances
  • Extended lessons learned process sharing to support future turnaround projects.

The Plant Manager commented. “It was very positive that the plant was able to begin trading on time after the shutdown. And today the plant continues to run well; Salem’s work was a real catalyst for making this happen.