Business cases AI Orchestration
AI Orchestration · Procurement
Procurement automation at scale across a pharmaceutical group’s manufacturing network
AutomatedRequisitions created, checked and routed without manual entry, across the group’s production sites
- Client
- Pharmaceutical group with several production sites
- Region
- Europe
- Engagement
- Consulting engagement
- Scope
- Source-to-Pay · Operational-demand integration · AI orchestration · Exception handling · Governance
01 — Situation
The group manufactures on several regulated sites, each with its own maintenance planning, production scheduling and local purchasing habits. Consumables, spare parts, packaging components and laboratory supplies were requisitioned by hand: part numbers copied from equipment records and bills of materials, quantities estimated, delivery points typed.
Buyers spent their days converting requisitions into purchase orders and correcting them. Errors in part numbers, quantities and delivery points were frequent, urgent requests jumped the queue, and the quality system required every step to be traceable.
02 — Scope
- requisition-to-order for maintenance, production and laboratory materials across all sites, on the Source-to-Pay platform already in place.
- Read operational demand where it originates: released maintenance work orders, production schedules and bills of materials.
- Check contract coverage, stock and delivery point, create the purchase order and route it by value and risk, with human validation on exceptions only.
- Respect the quality system and internal audit: decision rights, thresholds, validated steps and an audit trail for every automated action.
- 01
Diagnostic
Requisition and order flows analysed with process mining across the sites: volumes, touch points, rework and delays by category and by site.
- 02
Design
An orchestration layer between maintenance, production planning and the Source-to-Pay platform: demand reading, contract and stock checks, order creation and exception routing, with thresholds agreed with Finance and Quality.
- 03
Pilot
One site, one category, every automated order validated by a person for four weeks, then sampling. Exceptions reviewed daily and rules adjusted, with the validation documented in the quality system.
- 04
Scale
Site by site over two quarters, with the same rules and a shared exception queue, and buyers redeployed to supplier management, contracts and critical materials.
03 — Impact
Orders now leave the platform within minutes of a work order or production run being released, with the right part, quantity and delivery point. People handle exceptions, and only exceptions.
Source-to-Pay runs as one governed flow from operational demand to payment. Buyers manage suppliers, contracts and critical materials; planners have stopped typing requisitions altogether.
04 — ROI and savings
- RemovedManual requisition entryRequisitions created from operational demand; people validate exceptions only
- One flowSource-to-PayDemand reading, contract check, approval and ordering in a single governed process on the existing platform
- ImprovedProcess reliabilityPart-number, quantity and delivery-point errors caught as exceptions before ordering; every action traceable
- RedeployedBuyer timeFrom transaction processing to suppliers, contracts and critical materials
Outcomes are stated qualitatively: no quantitative result is published for this programme.
AI Orchestration
- Next: predictive replenishment of critical spares and consumables from equipment and production data.
- Supplier risk signals on the materials most exposed to single sources.
What this involved
- Process mining
- AI orchestration design
- Source-to-Pay automation
- Governance and controls
- Change management
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