Use TIMWOOD to overcome Challenges at Pharmaceutical Industries due to COVID-19

Investing time for Planning and give best effort to execution, is the best way to get success. Ensure doing correct in first time only, don’t waste time in duplication.

Here I will explain TIMWOOD, it a took to eliminate or reduce wastes. We know different explanation available for TIMWOOD, but I will emphasize on the few factors need to be relook due to COVID -19 pandemic effect.

“TIMWOOD” stands for:

• Transport
• Inventory
• Motion
• Waiting
• Over-processing
• Overproduction
• Defects

The seven wastes of manufacturing can be difficult to remember, but the acronym TIMWOOD makes it easy. Each letter in the acronym represents one of seven wastes:

Transport: Making decision it the important aspect of saving time and reduce the transportation of people. All the necessary approval to be provided with out any delay through e-mail, over phone or video call electronically when physical appearance is not possible. SOP or temporary deviation can be taken for approving any document remotely from home through mail approval or other electronic way in case of urgency.

Inventory: There are different views as to whether excessive inventory should be included in these wastes, as inventory (no matter how much) is considered an asset. Industries should have robust business continuity plan for utilizing inventory in better way. When we are taking about inventory then it can be API, excipients, machine parts or packaging material etc. Excessive and running out of resource but can have significant impact on business. 

Movement/Motion: Remember unnecessary, dangerous, and complicated movements are wasteful; they can cause harm to employees, damages to equipment, or defects in the product.

As we all know currently due to lock down industries are running with reduced man power, so individual people can responsible for multiple events. If we are not able to balance in between important and urgent task, then end of the day it will impact business performance. So, unnecessary movement due to improper leadership can caused harm during maintenance, calibration, manufacturing, packaging and testing activity. 

Waiting and Delays: Waiting is often an easy waste to overlook. Time that is lost due to a lull in productivity is considered a waste. This usually happens when workers need to wait on material or when production is halted for unexpected equipment maintenance. Even timey availability of QA personnel for approval or engineer to attend a breakdown can be consider as waste under this bucket.

Overproduction: Did you know overproduction can lead to other types of waste while hiding the need for improvement? When production exceeds customer demand, facilities are left with excessive inventory to store and manage.

Any failure or unacceptable result should to be reported without delay. If decision maker not available, event to be discussed/reported through mail or phone call with superior. Ensure, don’t process your further manufacturing activity with any faulty condition or failed result in QC. Otherwise batches will be dump at warehouse till the failure investigation completes. If batched need to be destroyed, then it can lead huge loss. 

Over Processing: A product or service that has more features or capabilities than required or expected by the company would be considered over processing. It is important for businesses to understand customer requirements and eliminating any tasks or processes that is not useful or necessary to those requirements.

It was evident that Certainly, hydroxychloroquine production and supply is in the peak news. Because Mr. President of USA commented in his official Twitter as well as press release also. But now the requirement of hydroxychloroquine is no more. So, we should take risk-based decision for manufacturing and supply.   

Defects: Many consider defects to be the worst of the seven wastes. Characterized as products that do not meet company standards, these products must either be scrapped or reworked, thus adding costs to the operation but not adding value for the customer.

Products (API or formulation) not meeting the predefine specifications can be reprocessed, retested, rejected or recalled as part of good manufacturing practices. But all acts are time consuming and non-value added. People invest more time on investigation and fault findings rather than routine activity or batch processing. We should to be more precise towards our practices and behavioral aspects. Prevention before failure and report before accident are the appreciable practices to reduce the defects.