| Client | Pharmaceutical manufacturing facility |
| Industry | Pharmaceutical Manufacturing |
| Facility Location | Old Toongabbie NSW (Western Sydney) |
| Service | Continuous Improvement, Process Flow Controls, Reliability Engineering |
| Team Deployed | 1 Process Flow Controls Technician (embedded, continuous improvement mindset) |
| Operating Environment | 3-shift continuous production |
| Starting Line Performance | ~1,750 items/hour actual output, against a rated capability of 2,250 items/hour |
| Outcome | Sustained output near 3,000 items/hour across all shifts, with a recorded single-shift peak of 60,110 items |
Our client in Western Sydney is a global healthcare company whose products are relied on in hospitals and clinical settings around the world. At this pharmaceutical manufacturing facility, a single production line’s output has a direct bearing on how much product reaches the wider supply chain — which makes the gap between a line’s rated capability and what it actually achieves, shift after shift, a genuine commercial problem, not just an engineering one.
The production line in question had a rated capability of 2,250 items per hour — equivalent to roughly 500,000 units across a 22-hour production day once changeovers were accounted for. Our client set MEX Engineering Group the challenge of closing the gap between that design capability and what the line was actually achieving, and pushing on toward a more optimal output.
They needed a partner who could:
The pharmaceutical manufacturing‘s initial request was for a mechanical fitter to spend time on the line and work through what looked like a reliability problem. Once on site, MEX Engineering Group’s assessment identified the real gap: the line didn’t just need faults fixed as they arose — it needed a process flow control technician with a continuous improvement mindset, evaluating the line’s throughput end to end.
Right-skill diagnosis. Deployed a process flow controls technician, embedded on the line, once assessment showed the challenge was about throughput and process, not a single mechanical fix
Baseline established immediately. On day one, hour-by-hour output was tracking at roughly 1,700–1,800 items per hour, against an initial working target of 1,900 — giving a clear, evidence-based starting point
Staged, evidence-led target-setting. A first formal target of 2,000 items per hour was set. Within two months, the line was hitting that target on every shift, and the target was raised to 2,500 items per hour
Root-cause elimination of micro-stoppages. The consistent focus was on reducing the frequency and duration of micro-stoppages and unplanned downtime — the accumulation of small interruptions that, left unaddressed, quietly cap a line’s output far below its rated capability
Eight months on from that first day-one baseline, and after continually resetting the target as each one was hit, the line is now producing close to 3,000 items per hour (sometimes over) sustained across all three shifts. That is an increase of roughly 70% on the initial hour-by-hour average, and comfortably beyond the line’s original rated capability of 2,250 items per hour.
One shift is now on record at 60,110 items, a standout result that shows just how far the line’s true capability has been pushed.
The delays that remain are now largely outside the machine itself, stoppages relating to consumable materials, and the recycling of infeed/outfeed trucks. The majority of the improvement achieved has come from reducing micro-stoppages and unplanned downtime, allowing the line to run more continuously than before.
Client’s baseline production is 2,000 before working with us.
Shows the overall circled in red of hitting 60,110 items. Great result.
Sustained output gains rarely come from a single fix — they come from treating reliability as an ongoing discipline rather than a one-off repair. Our client’s experience reflects a pattern common across high-speed pharmaceutical and FMCG production lines: the biggest throughput gains are often hiding not in major breakdowns, but in the accumulation of micro-stoppages and small, unplanned interruptions that rarely get systematically tracked.
Closing that gap takes an embedded, continuous improvement mindset — someone on the line long enough to see the pattern, set the next target, and keep pushing past it.
This case study is one example of the continuous improvement and process reliability capability MEX Engineering Group provides to manufacturers across pharmaceutical, FMCG, food and beverage, recycling, and high-speed packaging.
Related services:
If your production line is underperforming against its rated capability, an embedded continuous improvement specialist could be the difference between accepting the numbers you have and discovering the numbers you’re capable of.
MEX Engineering Group provides embedded site teams and engineering services to some of the country’s largest production facilities. We maintain critical infrastructure for industry leaders across FMCG, food and beverage, and high-speed packaging, including Tooheys, CHEP, Ullrich Aluminium, Goodman Fielder, and BlueScope Steel.