Pfizer Global Manufacturing, the manufacturing division of Pfizer Inc, has identified its Indian counterpart's Mumbai production facility to be made as one of the global sourcing bases. Aiming at this objective, the parent organization has initiated a major upgradation process at the Thane production plant to make it compatible to the production standards of Pfizer Inc.
According to highly placed sources in Pfizer Limited, the upgradation programme at the Thane plant would be finished in a phased manner and once it is fully complied with the Pfizer Inc standard, the parent company will start sourcing the product for its global market especially to the South East Asian market from the Indian plant. The sources added that the plant modernization process, which stared in mid 2002 would be completed by the end of this financial year. Though the programme is part of the PGM's production plant standardization initiative, the expenditure incurred on the project will be fully funded by Pfizer Limited, the Indian company.
"PGM as the manufacturing division of the global pharmaceutical company, its purpose is to continually supply the demand of Pfizer's portfolio of products with the highest regard for quality and thus the plant upgradation programme in initiated in the Indian plant as well," said the sources.
Pfizer Global Manufacturing is a global organization with operations worldwide supporting all major markets. PGM supports Pfizer's business objective of meeting the demand for Pfizer products and is used as a strategic resource in launching drugs and products quickly after regulatory approval has been received. Using state of the art equipment and leading edge technology, manufacturing colleagues work collaboratively with research and development in order to provide the highest quality products to the market.
Worldwide, PGM has 20,000 employees at major manufacturing sites located in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Currently, Pfizer Global Manufacturing is the leader in the pharmaceutical and consumer manufacturing industry. According to company sources, state of the equipment, machinery and computer systems makes Pfizer Global Manufacturing the leader and pioneer of many innovative technological breakthroughs in drug delivery systems such as the GITS (Gastro-Intestinal Tablet System) technology. There are four types of plants that PGM utilizes to manufacture Pfizer's products. It includes Drug Substance Plant, in which the actual drug is upscaled from the molecule that is produced from Pfizer Global Research and Development (PGRD) and mass produced into its raw form. It is highly automated and does not count on labor as much as highly sophisticated computerized systems to operate the state of the art equipment in these facilities.
The other category of plants are drug product (drug finishing) plants, vaccines / biological plants, consumer plants. While Drug Product plants take the raw drug and finish it whether it is to make oral tablets or capsules, or add other additives to make the taste of the drug palatable, the other two are dedicated to the manufacturing and development of vaccines and specialty drugs for animals and dedicated to the manufacturing of over-the-counter products respectively.