A leap to 90% more efficient pharmaceutical production

Laboratory & Allied Limited, founded in 1968, is the largest indigenous pharmaceutical manufacturer in Kenya and one of the region’s leading producers of quality generic medicines. From Nairobi it serves customers across East, Central, and Southern Africa with around 300 registered products — tablets, capsules, sterile injectables, syrups, creams, and inhalers. Around 1,000 people work at the company, roughly 800 of them in production.

When manual planning reached its limits

For years production was planned with Excel spreadsheets and the intuition of production managers. As operations grew, planning knowledge sat mainly with individual people. Sales managers had to check completion dates with production, products sometimes entered production out of priority order, machine investments leaned on experience rather than utilization data, and stock could build up when production wasn’t tied to live sales demand.

The demo that settled it

Head of IT Abdul Rucyinga surveyed the options and quickly set aside the only alternative, an SAP add-on — ERP extensions are not built for production planning. The SkyPlanner demo confirmed the choice: AI-powered scheduling, machine utilization tracking, inventory movement, order statuses, and reporting all matched what the company needed.

AI at the controls

Integration turned out to be one of the lightest parts of the project. The in-house IT team connected SkyPlanner to SAP Business One on HANA and Power BI largely on its own — mapping the data tables and setting up the data flows was quick work — and SkyPlanner’s team was needed only for the most complex cases, such as products that combine across multi-step processes. Machine views were configured so each user sees only the equipment relevant to their department. Today the AI produces an optimized production plan in seconds; a three-month plan across all workstations takes under half an hour from order entry to finished schedule, where before there was no comparable baseline at all. Management sees which machines run and which sit idle, how breakdown rates compare between lines, and whether output is keeping pace with sales demand, and sales follows every order through blending, production, and quarantine to expected delivery — without contacting production.

Efficiency has gone up 90% in production. Inventory control has gone up, and sales deliverables, getting goods on time and reporting to customer on time, has actually gone up 50%.

Abdul Rucyinga · Head of IT, Laboratory & Allied Limited

Reported results

• Production efficiency up 90% — systematic AI scheduling, KPI accountability, full utilization visibility
• On-time delivery to customers up 50% — production follows real sales demand
• Inventory aging and overstocking under control
• Investment decisions based on real utilization data for the first time
• Sales targets tested against actual production capacity before they are set

Through SkyPlanner’s reports the company has identified underused machines and is making targeted adjustments in Q2 2026. Budget planning has improved as well: goals stay realistic and the whole organization aligns around what production can deliver.