To keep up with growing market demands Fresenius Kabi Brazil needed to get a solid understanding of the future operation of its facility – both to secure investment planning and to determine the best facility layout to meet its production capacity goals. The company turned to NNE Pharmaplan for its planning and consulting expertise.

Virtual reality improves planning
NNE Pharmaplan engineer, Dr. Jörg Häussler, explains the approach taken on this project: “The client wanted an accurate picture of the facility far into the future as well as optimal equipment configuration, so we mapped out the processing parts of the future plant layout in a simulation model.”

The NNE Pharmaplan team had to consider a complex range of factors to create the best possible design. This included the company’s future product portfolio, an ambitious automation level, different shift models on the shop floor, and maximising the efficient interaction of manufacturing equipment and supporting utilities.

Once the entire facility was mapped into a computerised model, the team created a process simulation that covered the facility’s complete value chain. Using this tool, fundamental engineering criteria could be fixed and scanned in order to fit all the components together.

 
Workshops offer hands-on decision-making
In interactive workshops, Fresenius Kabi Brazil got a lifelike impression of its facility’s future processes and production performance. By providing a clear visual understanding of the process and equipment layout, the workshops facilitated excellent communication and constructive, engineering-driven decisions within the project team.

The final result was a highly optimised production area coupled with a reliable engineering process.