Case Studies -  Technical Project Management

As an early adopter, before most software companies embraced a true product approach, this customer had accumulated a large number of customizations to their MES (PAS-X) system. Over time, this created significant challenges: risky and costly product upgrades, high maintenance effort, and an overall elevated total cost of ownership.

With a major platform upgrade on the horizon, it became clear that reducing customizations was critical to lowering both cost and risk. My team and I led a detailed assessment to determine which customizations could be replaced with standard, out-of-the-box functionality and which were still essential to the customer’s business processes.

Results:

• Reduced customizations by more than 50%.

  • Significantly improved speed, cost and quality of future upgrades to the MES platform.

  • Lowered total cost of ownership and streamlined long-term maintenance.

A multinational biotech company faced costly MES (PAS-X) upgrades and a high total cost of ownership. To reduce costs of future platform updates and streamline maintenance, the company launched an initiative to standardize batch records across all facilities.

Three years into the program, I joined as project manager. At that point, the initiative was at risk of missing critical milestones - most urgently, ensuring batch record readiness for the production go-live of a newly constructed facility.

Through my initial assessment, I identified two key gaps: the team was trying to deliver against multiple competing priorities at once, and heavy reliance on manual work created unnecessary effort. By providing focus, structure, and leveraging opportunities for automation, we were able to get the project back on track.

Key Achievements:

• Delivered standardized batch records in time for the new facility’s production startup.

• Established a clear roadmap for rollout across all global sites, with the program now on track to meet commitments and achieve the targeted cost reductions across the network. 

• Automated labor-intensive, manual tasks, significantly reducing team workload.

• Implemented real-time progress reporting for executive sponsors and plant leadership, increasing transparency and confidence.

A large multinational pharmaceutical company set out to replace all paper forms and logbooks across two manufacturing sites with Tulip as their digital solution. Their goals were to increase compliance, reduce costs, and enable advanced analytics.

I led the team responsible for analyzing existing paper forms, logbooks, and related business processes, and translating them into digital applications. This required navigating the client’s complex organizational structure and quality procedures while guiding their teams on how to build compliant, high-quality apps on a no-code platform using agile methodology.

Results:

• Successfully digitized all paper forms and logbooks across two manufacturing sites in Tulip.

• Delivered organizational change management, earning strong positive feedback from client stakeholders.

• Established a repeatable standard for digitizing paper records that the client could apply at additional sites.

The client had acquired a new manufacturing facility in the United States to expand manufacturing capacity for their clinical trial and commercial launch. In order to meet demand and increase manufacturing volume, business processes at the site needed to be digitized.

I developed a digitization roadmap and IT governance concept. After receiving approval by the Manufacturers senior leadership we started implementing the roadmap and proceeded with the tech transfer from an existing facility

The implementation, integration and rollout of key systems such as MES (PAS-X)  and warehouse management was completed ahead of schedule and ready to enable the site to scale up manufacturing.