Kaizen for improvement of rapid protein production for early reagent protein quantities

A kaizen improvement effort was undertaken focusing on the workflows of an in-house workgroup whose aim was the rapid production of small amounts of protein reagents. The kaizen's goal was to reduce process lead times to accommodate more deliveries per year and more complex protein types. Business requirements were established, and baseline performance was evaluated against projected needs. Then potential areas for change were identified, selected, and implemented. Improvements were quantified based on established metrics as well as customer input. Overall in-house group capacity was raised 11% from 1.1 to 1.2 deliveries per person per week at the same time that the percentage of non-platform (more difficult) requests was increased to nearly 50% from under 10%. In-house group lead times from request to shipping for platform (less difficult) purification deliveries were improved by 30% from 11.1 to 7.7 days.