Merck Animal Health Uses Operations Research Methods to Transform Biomanufacturing Productivity for Lifesaving Medicines

Merck Animal Health offers veterinarians, farmers, pet owners, and governments a wide range of veterinary pharmaceuticals, vaccines, health management solutions and services, and an extensive suite of connected technology that includes identification, traceability, and monitoring products. Biomanufacturing uses living organisms (i.e., viruses and bacteria) to grow the active ingredients in vaccines, pharmaceuticals, and therapeutics. This high-tech manufacturing process generates unique challenges not found in many other industries. For example, biomanufacturing operations include high levels of uncertainty and batch-to-batch variability in production yield, lead times, and costs. Additionally, the high cost of equipment and labor-intensive nature of operations preclude the ability to flexibly add capacity. Facing these challenges, we decided that harnessing the power of operations research and advanced analytics to complement our rich life sciences and biomanufacturing expertise was critical. After four years of collaboration with the Eindhoven University of Technology, we developed a portfolio of optimization models and decision support applications that substantially improved our biomanufacturing effectiveness. The implementation of the developed models had a significant impact by generating $200 million of additional revenue without the need for additional raw materials, energy resources, or new equipment. The developed models are widely adopted across the firm, thus enhancing its core function.