MODELING SIMULATION AND OPTIMISATION OF A PHARMACEUTICAL PRODUCTION LINE

Pharmaceutical companies are allowed to deal in generic or brand medications and medical devices. Thus it is essential that the product conforms to specified customer requirements. In order to analyse the performance of the process, the critical factors which influence the production are evaluated. The objective of the study is to simulate the pharmaceutical production line using ARENA software and optimize the line by Design of Experiments technique in MINITAB by considering the response factor 'work in progress'. The critical factors identified are batch size, transfer time and the number of resources. A Taguchi approach is employed to gather experimental data. Then, based on signal- to-noise (S/N) ratio, the best sets critical parameters have been determined. Using these parameters values, the 'work in progress' may be minimized.