Alexion Pharmaceuticals: 78% faster packaging material creation
An employee-led Lean project transformed the packaging materials creation process — reducing lead time from 46 days to 10 days through a streamlined online workflow and parallel approvals.
Pharmaceutical / Biopharmaceutical
Lean Essentials
Blanchardstown, Dublin
78%
Reduction in packaging material lead time
46 → 10
Days to create new packaging materials
Global
Workflow adopted across supply chain operations
New packaging materials took 46 days to create
Alexion Pharmaceuticals is a global biopharmaceutical company focused on developing life-changing therapies for people living with rare disorders. Their facility in Blanchardstown, Dublin serves as the company’s Global Supply Chain and Quality Operations headquarters, employing approximately 1,400 people across Dublin and Athlone.
An employee identified that the lead time for creating new packaging materials was far too long. The standard process was taking an average of 46 days — despite the fact that expedited materials could arrive on site within 10 days. The bottleneck wasn’t in manufacturing or procurement — it was in the internal approval workflow.
The key issues were:
- Multiple signatures required on a paper-based material creation form, creating sequential delays
- Functions had to wait for the form to physically arrive before completing their updates
- No visibility on where each material was within the creation process
- No standardised check for completeness before materials arrived on site
- The 46-day lead time was constraining supply chain agility and purchasing power
From sequential paper approvals to parallel digital workflow
Key Challenges
The packaging materials team needed to:
- Reduce the standard lead time from 46 days to less than 2 weeks
- Eliminate the sequential signature bottleneck on the creation form
- Allow all functions to complete their updates independently and in parallel
- Introduce visibility on where each material sat in the creation pipeline
- Ensure all required information (vendor details, batch classification) was captured first time
The Lean Solution
Using the 8-Step Problem-Solving Process with a Kaizen event involving Purchasing, Quality Control, Warehousing and Finance:
- Mapped the current state approval workflow end-to-end, identifying sequential waits as the primary waste
- Used an Impact/Ease chart to prioritise improvement ideas from the cross-functional brainstorming session
- Designed a streamlined new packaging form with unnecessary QA and Ops approval signatures removed
- Created an online document workflow allowing parallel routing — all functions can now update simultaneously
- Developed an inbound deliveries report to check completeness before materials arrive on site
- Applied SMED principles to the critical approval window
8-Step Problem-Solving Process
The team applied the 8-Step methodology with a cross-functional Kaizen event involving Purchasing, Quality Control, Warehousing and Finance to map the full approval process and identify the root causes of delay.
Problem
Packaging material creation takes 46 days on average. Expedited materials arrive in 10 days — the internal process is the bottleneck.
Current State
Paper-based form requires sequential signatures. Each function waits for the form to arrive before starting their section.
Target
Reduce lead time to less than 2 weeks (14 days) for all new packaging materials across the operation.
Root Cause
Kaizen event with Purchasing, QC, Warehousing and Finance. Root cause: sequential approval workflow with no parallel processing.
Countermeasures
Streamlined form, removed unnecessary signatures, built online workflow for parallel approvals, added completeness checks.
Implementation
New online document workflow deployed. All functions can now update the material creation form independently and simultaneously.
Evaluation
Lead time reduced from 46 days to 10 days — a 78% reduction. Materials now created within the expedited delivery window.
Standardisation
Work Instruction created for inbound deliveries reports. Online workflow provides KPI visibility for tracking future improvements.
Countermeasures implemented
The team identified and implemented changes across the full approval workflow:
- Online parallel approval workflow. The new document routing allows all functions to complete their updates independently — eliminating the sequential wait that was the primary cause of delay.
- Streamlined packaging form. QA and Ops approval signatures removed where they weren’t adding value, reducing the number of handovers required.
- Quality master data integration. A quality master data set was incorporated into the basic material master data setup, eliminating risk from downstream supply chain processes.
- Completeness report. A new report checks materials for completeness before they arrive on site, preventing non-conformance issues.
- Weekly inbound deliveries report. Standardised Work Instruction created to run this report weekly, driving continuous visibility.
- SMED applied to critical window. The team applied Single Minute Exchange of Dies thinking to compress the critical approval window further.
Learnings
- The biggest delays were not in manufacturing or procurement — they were in internal approvals. Looking at the full process end-to-end revealed waste that was invisible from within any single function.
- Parallel workflows are transformative. Simply allowing functions to work simultaneously rather than sequentially eliminated the majority of the lead time.
- Cross-functional Kaizen events surface solutions that no single team would find alone. The purchasing, QC, warehousing and finance perspectives together produced a far better outcome.
- The expertise to solve the problem existed within the organisation — the Lean methodology provided the structure to surface and implement it.
The expertise already exists inside your organisation
This project demonstrates a pattern we see consistently across our pharmaceutical clients: the biggest process improvement opportunities are often in the administrative and approval workflows that surround manufacturing, not in manufacturing itself. A 78% reduction in lead time — from 46 days to 10 — was achieved without any change to the physical production process. The change was entirely in how the organisation managed information and approvals.
LeanTeams has worked with Alexion Pharmaceuticals since 2018 to streamline their business and improve their processes. You may also be interested in: Case Study 2 – Quality Control and Case Study 3 – Regulatory Artwork. All our case studies are available here.
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This case study is part of a series of Lean improvement projects at Alexion Pharmaceuticals. Explore our full library of case studies by sector or view our training programmes.