Cycle Time Improvement in Central Fill Pharmacy Based on Simulation

Recently, the Central Fill Pharmacy (CFP) market is expanding as more pharmaceutical packages were shipped to customers throughout the globe. When the manufacturing sector is attempting to increase productivity, perform cost containment, as well as improve customer response, cycle time is a key important aspect that needs to be optimized. The majority of CFPs use conveyor belts to move packages around the facility. Therefore, the cycle time can be improved by decreasing travel time on the conveyor belts. This paper aims to reduce the travel time to enhance the cycle time by adopting a reasonable design principle for the conveyor system in CFP. Simulation is crucial to facility planning and layout study. A unique conveyor system is proposed by learning from the existing conveyor system design and implemented in a Discrete-Event Simulation (DES) model to evaluate the performance metrics including travel time, throughput, collation window, and cost. The results show that the proposed design with less conveyor complexity can not only reduce travel time but also can help to save money. Furthermore, quality control charts and simulations are necessary to evaluate the stability and robustness of the proposed design.