AstraZeneca + Celonis

Context: A Global Supply Chain Opportunity

Since 2017, AstraZeneca’s GBS Process Solutions team (part of Global Business Services – GBS) has partnered with Celonis to unlock the power of Process Mining. This capability isa cutting-edge analytical discipline used to discover, monitor and improve processes based on how the processes actually operate using data driven insights, rather than how they are expected or perceived to perform. Initially focused on specific use cases in Finance business function, Process Mining quickly proved to be a driver of enterprise-wide transformation, delivering insights that streamlined operations and enabled better decision-making.

Building on this success, GBS Process Solutions and Operations business area identified another significant opportunity to bring visibility to process, data and offer new insights to AstraZeneca’s global supply chain — a global network spanning 26 manufacturing sites across 16 countries, and including hundreds of suppliers. At the heart of this effort was inventory management, critical to ensure timely delivery of medicines to patients and important for cost management. However, traditional methods fell short, offering limited visibility into end-to-end processes and leaving inefficiencies unaddressed.

Recognizing the potential for transformation, Tomasz Kacprowicz (Director and Global Process Mining CoE Lead of GBS Process Solutions), collaborated with supply chain teams to apply Process Mining to inventory management. This innovative approach delivered real-time insights, empowering teams to uncover bottlenecks, optimize workflows and streamline operations. 

Challenge: Unlocking Process Insights 

Beyond the supply chain complexity, Kacprowicz’s team identified exciting opportunities where Process Mining could deliver significant value:

• Enhancing visibility: AstraZeneca’s global supply chain had untapped potential to achieve consistent and better visibility into the time required to formulate and distribute medicines. By replacing the manual effort of data collection with automated and real-time insights, Process Mining could empower supply chain teams to make faster and more informed decisions.

• Flexible optimization: The diversity of inventory management practices across brands presented an opportunity to design scalable and adaptable solutions. Process Mining was the right capability to unlock to address each brand's unique needs, while creating a cohesive and streamlined approach to inventory management, fostering consistency and agility across the enterprise.

Solution: A New Era of Inventory Management

Kacprowicz and his team initially relied on case-centric Process Mining, which provided valuable insights into individual brands’ inventory processes. “Our business partners realized that it brought a lot of transparency to the inventory management landscape across API formulation, packing and distribution, and key metrics such as lead time.” 

While this approach laid a strong foundation and generated significant momentum, AstraZeneca GBS saw an opportunity to achieve even greater impact. Case-centric models, though effective, required separate frameworks for each brand, which limited scalability and efficiency. To overcome this challenge, the team embraced an innovative new era with the adoption of Object Centric Process Mining (OCPM) —a true game changer.

“It’s really like moving from 2D to 3D… with OCPM, we can look across the entire business process.”

Tomasz Kacprowicz, GBS Process Solutions (AstraZeneca)

With OCPM from Celonis, AstraZeneca GBS shifted to a comprehensive, end-to-end view of its processes, enabling teams to:

• Analyze different subprocesses holistically.

• Understand upstream and downstream impacts between subprocesses.

• Visualize multiple business objects simultaneously.

• Identify and map relationships and interactions between these business objects.

The results have been both transformative and measurable:

📉 Streamlined data collection, reducing manual effort and saving valuable time.

⚙️ Enhanced workflows, driving efficiency across the supply chain.

🚀 Accelerated medicines delivery, ensuring patients receive lifesaving medicines faster.

📦 Optimised inventory levels, unlocking cost savings and reducing waste.

These improvements have delivered significant value within inventory management, marking a major milestone in AstraZeneca GBS’s journey toward operational excellence.

Looking to the future, the organization is excited to use Celonis OCPM to additional brands and processes, unlocking even greater value: “It will allow us to expand this existing use case to additional brands using OCPM. Rather than having to replicate separate case-based models for different purposes, we can now augment our existing OCPM model.”

This innovative approach not only accelerates the rollout of optimized processes but also reinforces the role of Process Mining as a driver of enterprise-wide transformation.

Value: Limitless Potential for Process Optimization

GBS Process Solutions’ ambitions for process optimization with Celonis extend far beyond inventory management. This success story is just one example in a sea of potential applications. “Our Process Mining CoE is looking to cut our business processes in half… To enable that we want to apply Process Mining a wide range of key business processes within AstraZeneca,” says Kacprowicz.

“Our Process Mining CoE, part of the process solutions capability, is looking to cut our business processes in half.”

Tomasz Kacprowicz, GBS Process Solutions (AstraZeneca)

Leveraging OCPM to generate end-to-end digital twins of workflows remains a core catalyst for business transformations at AstraZeneca. “It gives that transparency to our business and really equips our teams with the right tools to optimize their business processes,” Kacprowicz concludes.

With AstraZeneca GBS’s ambitions for process-centric value generation and their focused use of Celonis as the transformational lever, the potential benefits suggest an exciting future. Watch this space!