World Class Manufacturing - Riding The Third Wave

Pharmaceutical manufacturing has, in recent years, undergone two "wavesof change" as companies have been forced first to focus on production costs, consolidating their manufacturing operations on a small number of centers of excellence, and second, to open up their plants to the needs of a worldwide customer base.

These are views expressed in a report by Fabrizio Perrone and Eugenio Cappaso, two Rome, Italy-based members of Anderson Consulting's Pharmaceutical & Medical Products Practice, both of whom have worked extensively with leading drugmakers, focusing on manufacturing strategy and vision.

In the process, say the consultants, plants have been transformed from executors of other departments' instructions to autonomous business units or "companies within companies," taking responsibility for an ever-wider range of functions as they become more responsive to the needs of their customers.