Cambrex is an innovative life sciences company that provides pharmaceutical products, expertise and technologies that accelerate small molecule therapeutics into markets across the world.

The company has a network of development and manufacturing plants across Europe and North America. With Cambrex’s recent acquisition of Halo Pharma, the company now offers formulation development and finished dose clinical and commercial manufacturing services. Cambrex’s acquisition of Halo creates a leading small molecule contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) with a broad range of capabilities and a robust customer base.

Its team of more than 1,650 experts offer an end-to-end partnership for the research, development and manufacture of small molecule at every stage of the lifecycle, and handle classical and advanced chemistry, enzymatic biotransformations, high potency APIs, high energy chemical synthesis, controlled substances and continuous processing.

Contract Pharma had the chance to sit down with Cambrex’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, Shawn P. Cavanagh, to talk operational excellence and Cambrex’s ongoing mission to be the leading small molecule contract manufacturing organization (CMO).

Contract Pharma: We hear the phrase “operational excellence” being used a lot in the industry, but what does Cambrex mean by it, and what are the goals of the initiative in the company?

Shawn Cavanagh: Operational excellence (OE) is more than a process improvement tool set at Cambrex. It is a program that applies to all aspects of the business and fosters a continuous improvement culture delivering meaningful business results year over year. When we think broadly about our value stream of delivering quality products to our customers, we see that every function of our global business plays an important role, and while production and quality may be the most obvious areas touching our products, OE has shown us that there is much more.

The concept of OE has been within the company since 2004, but in 2016, as an executive team, we agreed to focus on it as a core component of our growth strategy. We have created a tight link between our OE program and business results and this has improved everything from the front end process of developing new business opportunities to the back end customer service and shipping.
We established a team within the company with members from all the sites we operate, which reports back every month to the executive team, which in turn provides ongoing updates to our board of directors.

We do set annual goals to keep the program focused on the priorities of the business, and as we target new capabilities, our metrics and goals will be adapted to keep us focused on the right priorities. 

CP: What have been the challenges you have faced in this initiative, especially working on a global basis?

SC: We are not unique in the challenges we face regarding OE and its implementation. Often, these challenges relate to driving and sustaining engagement across the whole organization and as you would expect, communications and constant reinforcement of the principles we are looking to adhere to are a must. Establishing a global center of excellence model that includes our OE site leads from around the world helps drive consistent communications across the business, and because of the way we structured this, and with the strong support this has from the Executive Team, we maintain oversight of all the local OE programs at a high level and are able to communicate key messages at regular town hall events across all sites.

Overall, OE requires the same reinforcement and consistent messaging as any initiative the company embraces, but we have seen that the maintenance of the tight linkage between OE and our overall business results has been a critical component of our success. In our fast-paced business environment OE must deliver like everything else, so needs a similar, sustained input of effort from all areas in order to deliver the results we want.

CP: How do you measure success? Are the results of the program quantifiable?

SC: We measure OE performance as a component of our monthly strategy review with all of our operating sites, and from a financial perspective, we measure cash savings and cost avoidance. Since the beginning of the program, we have saved millions of dollars as a direct result of the hard work of many employees across the company.

In addition, we look at quality measures for executing production batches ‘Right First Time’ and various metrics that help ensure we have the appropriate level of engagement and participation across the business. In the two years that we have been measuring OE performance, it has been truly remarkable what OE has done for us.

CP: Can you give some specific examples of where the program has been particularly successful? Have there been any surprise or unexpected benefits?

SC: There have been several projects that highlight the range of OE benefits that we have seen across the business. For example, one of our earliest OE projects addressed cleaning and related validation improvements in our Charles City, IA production facility. Our ‘Right First Time’ performance improved by more than 50%, while reducing cleaning times between projects by 20%. This freed up plant capacity while saving costs that could be utilized toward other improvement opportunities.
In our generic API manufacturing plant in Milan, Italy solvent recycling and material usage improvements have not only produced sustainable cost savings, but also had a significant positive environmental impact. In Karlskoga, Sweden, we have introduced visual boards and “Pulse” meetings, which have greatly improved the speed of decision-making and issue resolution across the site.

As a contract manufacturer, we do need to be careful and ensure that our customers are in agreement with any changes that may impact their product areas. These customer interactions have provided several unexpected benefits, however, for example, one of our larger customers had its OE representatives work with ours to share best practices and introduce improvements at one of our Cambrex sites. Aside from the financial and operational improvements in the near term, we gained a better working relationship with that customer which we hope will become a long term benefit for everyone.

We have a large team at Cambrex spread across the world, and internally, we have seen more and more people reaching out to our OE program leaders to share ideas. Although there were already established mechanisms to share ideas throughout the company and across sites, the unsolicited input from the OE program has highlighted the passion that people have for our company and what we can be.

CP: And what is the future of the program, how do you see it developing?

SC: As we look down the road, OE will continue to be a strong component of our growth strategy. We expect the program to grow by tackling more complex challenges within our business, and we also see opportunities to partner with customers to address issues across the entire value stream.