Allan Webb is delighted to have supported Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK), in developing an obsolescence management solution to ensure early warnings of any potential obsolescence issues are identified before starting long production runs.
As the world-leading manufacturer of Innovative Medicines, Vaccines & Consumer Healthcare Products, GSK’s production line maintenance teams needed to be confident about the availability of spares for production line machinery to ensure minimum downtime and mitigate the risk of a slowdown in output. From our work in the defence sector, they knew that we brought a track record in managing parts inventory for mission-critical equipment and were capable of completing this project whilst production lines were still running.
Our team of Subject Matter Experts spent a few weeks onsite carrying out inspections, visually chacking all parts of the production line, in order to establish an up-to-date Bill of Materials (BOM) which was then input into AWL’s DiamondOM (Obsolescence Management) Tool.
The tool initially establishes the current obsolescence status of parts and continually monitors for any changes. Algorithms are then able to filter out non cost-effective parts from the BOM, which were removed, and an obsolescence risk assessment was completed on existing parts.
DiamondOM then checked part availability online and our team of specialists contacted identified suppliers worldwide to help GSK’s team make informed decisions about their machiery and parts supply status.
With the completion of the project, and DiamondOM now acting as a repository of structured parts lists for all production lines, GSK could, for the first time, identify common parts across all production lines. All parts can now be continuosly analysed and monitored with the assistance of reports from the DiamondOM database which updates itself in real-time.
The whole process has saved GSK vast amounts of time and money checking parts on the production line and giving clear line of sight to any obsolescence issues, whilst also enabling intechangable parts to be swapped between production lines.