A Picture of Production: How Contract Pharmacal Optimized Line Performance with TrakSYS

Contract Pharmacal Corp. (CPC) is a full-service partner in developing, manufacturing, and packaging pharmaceuticals, including over-the-counter drugs, dietary supplements, and solid-dose Rx products. Founded in 1971 and still owned and operated by the same family, CPC today employs 1,500 of the most experienced professionals in the industry and has commercialized more than 4,500 products for customers such as Bayer, GNC, and AmerisourceBergen.

As CPC's operations grew, the company needed to optimize production to keep meeting customer demand without sacrificing quality. As part of one client contract, CPC built an entire dedicated plant with eight large-scale lines and needed to demonstrate line capacity and production efficiency to that client in real time.

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Before TrakSYS, CPC lacked real-time production data and had minimal insight into the causes of downtime and poor production. It was difficult to correlate line progress with production plan timelines, a language barrier existed between operators and engineers, and there was little transparency between shifts.

Working with Parsec Certified Partner Applied Control Engineering (ACE), CPC rolled out TrakSYS to its Hauppauge, NY plant, where several stable, low-variable lines consistently ran at 75% OEE. Real-time dashboards showing current state, recent production history, and OEE metrics were built for each line and piece of equipment, alongside a filterable waterfall chart for full performance analysis with drill-downs to root causes.

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Monitors installed throughout the plant let management and production staff track performance in real time, giving teams a head start on line maintenance and turning OEE into a source of friendly competition among operators. TrakSYS also digitized quality inspections, with tasks configured to trigger automatically based on required completion frequency.

TrakSYS has helped facilitate company-wide process improvements at CPC, supporting the creation of standard operating procedures and a reduction in losses and scrap. Based on results achieved so far, CPC expects to increase production yield by a minimum of 3%.

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Looking ahead, CPC plans to expand TrakSYS to older, less automated lines and is considering tying TrakSYS run-time metrics into its CMMS system to trigger preventive maintenance actions.