Biotech/Pharmaceutical Operations Excellence Consortium Quarterly Meeting Held.

Business Editors/Health/Medical Writers

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 18, 2003

Tefen USA, the leading international operations consulting firm, announces that on May 8, 2003 the Biotech/Pharmaceutical Operations Excellence Consortium met for its quarterly meeting hosted by Chiron Corporation, a consortium member.

The keynote session was delivered by James Nash, Chiron Biopharmaceutical's Vice President for Technology Development and Operations. The session, "Cycle Time Reduction Within Biologics: Anecdotes, Speculations and Pitfalls," focused on comparing the challenges in biopharmaceutical with those in pharmaceutical. Mr. Nash discussed the applicability of operations excellence tools and methodologies successfully applied by pharmaceutical companies to the biopharmaceutical industry.

The rest of the quarterly meeting's focus was on human errors. Sessions presented by Chiron, Genentech and Tefen highlighted the effect of human errors on cycle time, cost of manufacturing, compliance and overall company performance. One category of human errors that has major impact on performance is document errors. Reducing such errors and taking measurements to make nonconformance visible were a central part of the discussions. Consortium members agreed that the key to effectively impacting the quality of documents prepared and submitted by manufacturing and QC to QA is to deploy initiatives at the production floor and lab level. By increasing accountability and staff participation, as well as improving the clarity of batch records and procedures, document errors can be dramatically reduced.

The discussions also concentrated on "mistake-proofing," a process to prevent errors and accidents from happening. "Tefen's experience shows that the most cost-effective way to really prevent human errors and to bring quality at the source is to apply advanced quality engineering techniques early in the design process. This allows an organization to proactively mistake-proof the systems and procedures, a concept originally introduced by Toyota, called Poka-Yoke. The biopharmaceutical industry has a lot to learn in that area from other industries that have already implemented these techniques, such as automotive, aerospace and high-tech," stated Amir London, Partner, Life Sciences, Tefen.

The next meeting of the Consortium will be hosted by IDEC Pharmaceutical in fall 2003 in San Diego, CA. Additional information can be found at www.tefen.com/consortium.

About the Biopharma Operations Excellence Consortium (OEC)

The consortium is comprised of members that represent leading biopharma companies including Abbott, Abgenix, Amgen, Applied Biosystems, Avigen, Baxter, Bayer, Biogen, Cell Gensys, Chiron, Genentech, Genzyme, IDEC, Wyeth and Xoma.

Tefen facilitates the Consortium's meetings. The Consortium's charter is to surface key challenges facing biopharma manufacturing companies, share project experiences and use the group's collective knowledge to drive each member company -- and the industry as a whole -- to world-class levels of operational effectiveness and efficiency. The OEC meets on a quarterly basis at a rotating member's site. Additional information can be found at www.tefen.com/consortium.