AstraZeneca has earned Tulip’s Greenhouse Award for the second year in a row — with Factorytalk delivering a scalable digital solution that's designed to improve efficiency and standardisation across global packing lines.
Factorytalk, AstraZeneca
After winning in 2024 for the Tulip Lifecycle Solution, AstraZeneca continued its momentum in 2025 as the Digital Changeover (DCO) team received Tulip’s Greenhouse Award. Factorytalk has played a key role in enabling this achievement, working closely with AstraZeneca to design, validate, and scale a digital changeover solution that "transformed" operations across global sites.
According to Thomas Foulkes, associate director, Digital Projects at AstraZeneca, the challenge, transformation journey, and results highlighted in Tulip’s Greenhouse Spotlight capture the key factors behind the DCO team’s success. The summary below reflects the essential insights he shared.
The challenge
In high-volume pharmaceutical packing operations, changeover time is one of the biggest operational bottlenecks. Many sites relied on paper-based procedures—slow, inconsistent, and lacking visibility. For AstraZeneca, this meant delays, variability, and a lack of standardisation across global operations.
The transformation
Through close collaboration, AstraZeneca’s DCO team and Factorytalk delivered a scalable, user-centric digital solution on the Tulip platform that meets the stringent needs of pharmaceutical manufacturing.
- What started as a single pilot line quickly expanded to 17 sites worldwide, covering over 100 packing lines — all within just three months.
- The speed and scale of deployment demonstrate both technological readiness and strong commitment from leadership and frontline teams.
The results
With digital changeovers in place, AstraZeneca achieved:
- 29% faster changeover time on one line
- 50% reduction in process variability
- Standardised global workflows replacing inconsistent paper SOPs
- Real-time data capture and analytics for continuous improvement
- Stronger teamwork, cross-functional collaboration, and operator empowerment
- A cultural shift toward digital-first, human-centric operations
This cultural transformation—including psychological safety, open collaboration, and inclusive co-creation—was a major factor in their Greenhouse Award recognition.
“AstraZeneca’s achievement is a powerful example of what becomes possible when world-class operations meet modern, flexible technology. Our team is proud to have worked side-by-side with AZ to design, build, and validate a global-ready solution at remarkable speed. Scaling from a single pilot to more than 100 lines in three months is not just a technical milestone—it reflects a shared commitment to empowering frontline teams, improving quality, and transforming the way work is done.” said David Holt, group managing director, Factorytalk.
The role
The role in this journey went beyond supplying software. As a trusted partner, Factorytalk:
- Designed, built, and validated a GxP-compliant, scalable digital solution suitable for global deployment in highly regulated environments.
- Supported AstraZeneca’s cross-functional teams — Manufacturing, Quality, Lean, IT — to ensure the solution met needs across the board (data transparency, compliance, process ownership, auditability).
- Enabled AstraZenca to achieve a rapid self-service roll-out beyond the pilot sites with the App templates, validation content, and playbook materials.
- Provided ongoing support and training, helping frontline workers adopt new digital processes quickly and confidently.