A major €500M investment in Ireland’s pharmaceutical manufacturing future — New production areas, Advanced laboratories, and Temperature-controlled warehousing built and commissioned in 24 months, with 200 complex systems integrated, while the existing facility remained fully operational throughout.
Last Planner® System
Value Stream Mapping
6S Methodology
Interface Management
CQV Delivery
Unlike greenfield or brownfield builds, the MSD Carlow Expansion required constructing, commissioning, and qualifying entirely new facilities directly adjacent to — and interfacing with — active GMP pharmaceutical manufacturing operations. Every interface risk had to be identified, managed, and mitigated in real time. Lean construction was not just beneficial — it was essential.
| Project Value | Duration | Teams Collaborated with | Systems Installed & Comissioned | Partners Trained & Certified |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| € 0.5Bn | 24 Months | 10 | 200 | 300 |
| Project Value | € 0.5Bn |
|---|---|
| Duration | 24 Months |
| Teams Collaborated with | 10 |
| Systems Installed & Commissioned | 200 |
| Partners Trained & Certified | 300 |
The MSD Carlow site has long been central to MSD’s global operations — a foundational facility in the commercial supply of vaccines, biologics, and small molecule drug products. The €500M expansion programme represented MSD’s continued and deepening commitment to Ireland as a global pharmaceutical manufacturing hub, transforming the Carlow site into an even more capable and versatile production centre.
Executed over a 24-month programme, the expansion delivered three major new facility types: state-of-the-art production areas for expanded biologics and small molecule manufacturing, advanced quality control and development laboratories, and large-scale temperature-controlled warehousing. The project also integrated over 200 complex systems — each requiring precise sequencing, precise installation, and full GMP qualification before integration with live site operations.
What makes this expansion distinctively challenging — and what makes Lean Touch Solutions’ involvement distinctively valuable — is that every phase of construction and commissioning took place alongside live manufacturing operations. The existing Carlow facility continued to produce pharmaceutical products for MSD’s global supply chain throughout the 24-month programme. The consequences of disrupting those operations — in terms of product supply and regulatory compliance — made interface management the single most critical challenge of the entire project.
The Live-Site Challenge: Constructing and commissioning 200 complex systems on an active pharmaceutical site requires a level of planning precision that conventional project management simply cannot provide. Every construction activity had to be planned, sequenced, and coordinated in real time to ensure zero disruption to live GMP manufacturing — and the Last Planner® System, embedded across all 10 specialist teams, was what made that possible.
The expansion significantly upgraded the Carlow site with three distinct types of new infrastructure — each serving a different function in MSD’s expanded operational capability.
New state-of-the-art production suites for expanded biologics and small molecule drug manufacturing — built to the most stringent GMP cleanroom standards.
Advanced Laboratories Fully equipped quality control and analytical development laboratories — providing the on-site testing and validation capability to support expanded production volumes.
Large-scale cold-chain warehousing with precise temperature control — critical for the storage and logistics of biologics and temperature-sensitive pharmaceutical products.
Our Lean Programme –
Lean Touch Solutions was engaged to design and lead the lean construction programme throughout the construction and commissioning phases of the Carlow Expansion. Our specific objective was to ensure on-time delivery of new facilities with zero disruption to existing operations — a mandate that demanded a lean programme built from the ground up around the unique challenges of live-site pharmaceutical expansion.
Every construction activity had to be planned and executed without impacting adjacent GMP manufacturing areas.
New utility connections had to be tied into live systems during planned outage windows.
New systems integrated with the live operational environment with strict GMP control.
Specialist teams worked alongside operational staff with strict safety and access control.
The operational backbone of the expansion — collaborative weekly work planning across all 10 teams, with structured look-ahead scheduling and constraint removal specifically designed to protect live operations from construction interference.
Current-state and future-state mapping of critical construction and commissioning workflows — identifying and eliminating non-value-adding activities, particularly at the boundaries between live operations and new construction.
Comprehensive 6S site organisation across all construction and new-facility zones — creating clean, safe, well-organised workspaces that minimised contamination risks to adjacent live GMP areas throughout the 24-month programme.
Targeted rapid-improvement workshops at identified bottlenecks — particularly around interface-intensive activities such as utility connections, handover from construction to commissioning teams, and system integration sequences.
Interface processes between construction and live operations mapped in detail — from utility outage procedures to commissioning handover protocols — ensuring every cross-boundary activity had a defined, optimised, and agreed process.
Cultural transformation across all 10 teams and 300 certified partners — building the five lean behaviours (Trust, Accountability, Transparency, Respect, Continuous Improvement) that underpinned the collaborative planning needed for live-site delivery.
Project Approach –
From project inception, Lean Touch Solutions worked with MSD’s site leadership, project management teams, and specialist trade partners to develop a bespoke lean construction strategy tailored to the unique challenges of expanding an operational pharmaceutical site. The strategy addressed interface risks as its primary design constraint — with every lean tool and technique selected and adapted to directly support the live-site management challenge.
Our Standardised Framework, Adapted for Live-Site Delivery. Lean Touch Solutions deployed its proven lean construction implementation framework — but every element was specifically adapted to the constraints of live-site pharmaceutical expansion. The interface between construction, commissioning, and live operations was identified as the programme’s critical success factor from day one, and the entire lean system was designed around managing it.
Lean programme strategy developed jointly with MSD site leadership, project management, and all trade partner leads. Interface risk assessment conducted across all construction-to-operations boundaries. Critical interface windows (planned utility outages, access corridor closures, commissioning handover points) identified and built into the programme master schedule as non-negotiable planning constraints.
Full stakeholder buy-in secured across MSD leadership, site operations, and all 10 construction teams — including the critical agreement of site operations management that construction planning commitments would be respected and supported. 5S launched site-wide to establish the safe, clean, organised working environments required on a live GMP site from day one of construction.
Last Planner® System deployed across all 10 specialist teams with a look-ahead schedule specifically designed around interface windows and live-site constraints. 300 partner personnel trained and certified in lean construction best practices — with training adapted to emphasise the live-site context and the importance of commitment-keeping in a zero-disruption delivery environment.
Value Stream Mapping sessions conducted on critical construction and commissioning workflows — focusing particularly on interface processes between new build and live operations. Current-state waste identified in utility outage sequencing, equipment delivery logistics, and commissioning handover processes. Future-state designs implemented to compress these processes and reduce interface risk throughout the 24-month programme.
Lean principles extended into Commissioning, Qualification, and Validation as new systems entered the qualification pipeline alongside live manufacturing. Pull planning applied to IQ/OQ/PQ protocol execution across all 200 systems. Systems integrated into live operations sequentially without disruption — validating the lean programme's core objective of zero disruption to existing manufacturing throughout the 24-month expansion.
Outcomes & Results –
The MSD Carlow Expansion lean programme delivered on every critical metric — schedule, quality, system integration, partner capability, and operational continuity. The project demonstrates what lean construction can achieve in the most operationally sensitive pharmaceutical environments.
Expansion delivered on time in 24 months alongside live manufacturing
Complex systems integrated and commissioned to GMP standard
Partners trained and certified in lean construction methodology
Specialist teams coordinated through a single Last Planner® Planning System
Lean Construction on Live Pharmaceutical Sites –
Pharmaceutical site expansion is one of the most demanding lean construction environments because failure is invisible until it is catastrophic. A single unplanned disruption to a live GMP manufacturing operation — a utility interruption, a contamination event, an unexpected access closure — can result in product loss, batch failures, regulatory investigations, and supply chain disruption that reaches patients globally.
The Last Planner® System’s collaborative commitment model directly addresses this risk. When every team on a live-site expansion project has made explicit, visible commitments about what they will do, when they will do it, and what they need to make it happen — the probability of unplanned interference drops dramatically. Constraints are identified and removed in advance, not discovered in the moment.
Lean Touch Solutions has delivered lean programmes on five major MSD facilities across Ireland. The Carlow Expansion represents our most complex live-site engagement — and demonstrates the unique value our practitioners bring to pharmaceutical expansion programmes where operational continuity is non-negotiable. We are an LCI-registered lean construction trainer in Ireland, and our results at Carlow show what lean-embedded delivery achieves on the most sensitive sites.
Live-site expansion is our speciality. Tell us about your project & we’ll explain how our lean programme protects your operations while accelerating delivery.
The MSD Carlow Expansion proves lean construction’s unique value on active pharmaceutical sites — delivering major new facilities without disrupting the manufacturing operations that depend on them.
Interface management on a live pharmaceutical site is not a planning exercise — it is a daily operational reality. The Last Planner® System was the tool that made it manageable at Carlow. By creating a commitment-based planning culture across all 10 teams, LPS ensured that every interface event — utility outage windows, access corridor agreements, commissioning handover activities — was planned, communicated, and executed with the precision a live GMP environment demands.
The most significant waste on a live-site pharmaceutical expansion is not in the construction process itself — it is at the boundaries between construction and live operations. These boundaries are where delays accumulate, where risks materialise, and where the consequences of poor planning are felt most acutely.
Lean Touch Solution’s Value Stream Mapping sessions at Carlow specifically targeted these boundaries — mapping current-state waste in utility outage sequencing, in commissioning handover protocols, and in equipment delivery logistics. Future-state designs eliminated that waste and compressed critical-path activities, contributing directly to the project’s on-time completion.
6S is not just about efficient work organisation — on a live pharmaceutical construction site, it is a GMP compliance tool. Disorganised construction zones adjacent to live GMP manufacturing areas represent a contamination risk, an access risk, and a safety risk. The 5S programme at Carlow established and sustained the clean, organised, compliant working environments that the live-site challenge demanded.
Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardise, Sustain — embedded from the first week of construction through to final system commissioning, ensuring that the construction programme never became a threat to the facility it was expanding.
Lean Touch Solutions has supported five major MSD pharmaceutical programmes across Ireland — a combined value exceeding €2.5Bn. The Carlow Expansion is the most complex live-site engagement in our portfolio, and the proof that our lean practitioners can manage the full spectrum of pharmaceutical construction challenges.
Based in Naas, Co. Kildare, we serve pharmaceutical construction and expansion projects across Ireland and Europe. As LCI-registered lean construction trainers, our methods are grounded in the best practices of the Lean Construction Institute. Contact our team to discuss how lean construction can protect your live operations while delivering your next expansion on time.
