Hidden factory

Said with some cynicism, a typical pharmaceutical operation produces both products and paper. The paper production is the "hidden factory" which some people estimate to be as costly as the "real factory". Documentation of an operation must be an integral part of the operation itself. This is, of course, a huge simplification, but it illustrates a very important point. The physical input and output from an operation not only includes raw materials and finished products but also documentation. Inside the operation, the "hidden production" of paper have many similarities to the "real production" of products (Figure 1.1). 

Documentation in the hidden factory has its own production process. The raw material of paper is prepared into documents and data entry forms as production plans, master production and control records, batch records, raw material sheets. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and so on, which in turn are enhanced with more and more manual data entry and signing at each step of activity with approvals. The paper flows from desk to desk as collections of related documents. There is a huge "add ingredient" or "assembly" process of data to the physical medium, which at each step of activities has to be at the right place at the right time—just as the physical products. 

This hidden production with its execution, logistics and quality management is what the paperless operation replaces. Therefore, the hidden factory needs to be exposed—both to set the goals for the paperless operation, which should be based on a streamlined version of the existing hidden factory, and to set the benchmarking goals that are important for evaluating the business case of a paperless operation on both the cost and benefit side. 

On top of the actual cost of running the hidden factory, there are some serious disadvantages of paper media, which up until recently have been accepted without question because there were no alternatives. 

Several process parameters may interact to produce a different defect than would have resulted from the individual effects of these parameters acting independently. This complex case may require that the interaction of various process parameters be evaluated in a matrix of experiments. In some cases, a defect cannot be detected until late in the process sequence. Thus, a defect can cause rejection, rework, or failure of the product after considerable value has been added to it. These cost items due to defects can reduce yield and return on investments by adding to hidden factory costs. All critical processes require special attention for defect elimination by process control. 

In general, interior steelwork is exposed to less severe conditions than exterior, but in some chemical factories the reverse is true and here special types of paint are needed. Much structural steel is encased in concrete it is therefore hidden from view and is given some protection while the concrete remains alkaline. Where the concrete is thick, corrosion may be delayed, but as the concrete becomes carbonated and particularly if it is penetrated by acidic rain water, the metal will corrode. In general it is advisable that steel which is to be encased in concrete, especially for industrial plants, should... 

There is no doubt that by the middle of the war the Nazis had acquired vast, hidden armouries of chemical weapons and the Wehrmacht still found millions of marks to pump into the testing and production of poison gas. Indeed, the effort put by the Germans into chemical warfare research was considerable with them employing double the number of scientists than Britain,12 and their twenty factories were capable of producing about 12,000 tons of poison gas a month.13 Indeed, the Allies believed, in a report issued after the war, that the Germans had about 70,000 tons of poison gas stockpiled at various... 

Bulutoglu, D. A. and Cheng, C. S. (2003). Hidden projection properties of some nonregular fractional factorial designs and their applications. Annals of Statistics, 31, 1012— 1026. 

This "outlandish creature was Mendeleeff, the Russian prophet to whom the world listened. Men went in search of the missing elements he described. In the bowels of the earth, in the flue dust of factories, in the waters of the oceans, and in every conceivable corner they hunted. Summers and winters rolled by while Mendeleeff kept preaching the truth of his visions. Then, in 1875, the first of the new elements he foretold was discovered. In a zinc ore mined in the Pyrenees, Lecoq de Roisbaudran came upon the hidden eka-aluminum. This Frenchman analyzed and reanalyzed the mineral and studied the new element m every possible way to make sure there was no error. Mendeleeff must indeed be a prophet For here was a metal exactly similar to his eka-aluminum. It yielded its secret of two new lines to the spectroscope, it was easily fusible, it could form alums, its chloride was volatile. Every one of these characteristics had been accurately foretold by the Russian. Lecoq named it gallium after the ancient name of his native country. 

It should be noted that there is a great deal of information hidden in large factorial designs n = 16). When analysis shows that only a few factors are significant, the residuals (differences between calculated and measured values) may be analyzed.A small spread of residuals under certain conditions as opposed to others may indicates better reproducibility of the process or formulation under these conditions. An example of its pharmaceutical use is presented in the example of Menon et al. l... 

Lambert, R. (2004). Death of a factory Market rationalism s hidden abode in inner city Melbourne. Anthropological Forum, 4(3), 297-313. 

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