Enabling On Demand Material Movement in Drug Manufacturing | On Time Edge

This global life sciences manufacturer produces high-value combination drug and medical device products across multiple GMP-compliant facilities. The company faced increasing demand for agility, quality assurance, and traceability across manufacturing and packaging lines especially in support of just-in-time (JIT) production and patient-specific therapies.

Data silos and inefficient processes constrain material movement

Material movement across the facility was constrained by fragmented data, paper-based workflows, and poor coordination between systems and physical processes. Key pain points included:

Manual triggers and delays — Material movements were manually requested, leading to frequent delays and bottlenecks on the shop floor.

Siloed data systems — Inventory status, machine readiness, and order execution data were dispersed across MES, WMS, ERP, and standalone spreadsheets.

Quality and compliance risk — Disconnected systems make it difficult to verify correct material staging, increasing the risk of batch deviation or rework.

Inefficiency across packaging and manufacturing lines — The inability to synchronize material readiness with packaging demand creates idle time and excess inventory buffers.

Creating a technology-enabled, data-driven material movement framework

To remove these constraints, the manufacturer partnered with On Time Edge, PlanetTogether, and ZONTAL to pilot a next-generation digital and physical coordination solution. The objective: use real-time data and intelligent orchestration to support on-demand, accurate, and traceable material movement across manufacturing and packaging environments. The solution included:

Unified data ingestion and contextualization — ZONTAL ingested structured and unstructured data across MES, WMS, LIMS, and ERP systems transforming it into a harmonized, event driven data model. This included material inventory status, location, expiration, lot genealogy, machine readiness, and operator availability.

Intelligent orchestration — PlanetTogether layered intelligent orchestration logic over the ZONTAL data model dynamically aligning material movement triggers with equipment status, production progress, and shift-level constraints. Material handlers received real time, optimized task sequencing across mobile and wearable devices.

Integration and deployment — On Time Edge’s professional services team led the end-to-end integration, connecting shop floor systems to the ZONTAL platform using lightweight edge services and aligning workflows with ISA-95 models. OTE also configured real-time dashboards and alerting systems to ensure that materials moved with precision and compliance.

Early results in streamlining material movement

• Eliminated material staging delays — Reduction in wait time between material request and fulfillment across pilot lines.
• Improved fulfillment accuracy — Right material- right place-right time execution rate, reducing rework and scrap.
• Increased equipment utilization — Improvement by synchronizing material availability with machine readiness.
• Reduced paper dependency — Digital traceability for all movement transactions, improving audit readiness and batch release times.
• Enhanced quality assurance — Real time validation of materials against digital batch records and process constraints, minimizing compliance risks.

This pilot delivered a scalable framework for demand-driven material movement blending digital intelligence with physical workflows. By unifying data through ZONTAL, orchestrating action through PlanetTogether, and integrating seamlessly with On Time Edge’s industry expertise, the company positioned itself to expand predictive and lean material management across global sites.

Looking to the future, the team is now expanding to broader production areas, integrating environmental and equipment health data into the material movement logic, and enhancing KPI dashboards to support continuous improvement.

This collaboration proves the power of harmonized data, domain expertise, and intelligent execution. Together, On Time Edge, PlanetTogether, and ZONTAL are unlocking a smarter, more agile future for combination product manufacturing where quality, compliance, and efficiency move in sync.