Legend Biotech: scaling CAR‑T manufacturing with digital scheduling
Legend Biotech is a fast‑growing cell therapy company whose first commercial product, CARVYKTI, has become the highest‑selling CAR‑T therapy in a single quarter, with more than 8,000 patients treated and network capacity on track to reach 10,000 patients annually by the end of 2025. Achieving that kind of scale for a personalized, autologous therapy required more than adding cleanrooms and hiring operators; it demanded a different approach to planning and scheduling.
In November 2025, Pierre Jourdain (Global Head of Growth & Competitiveness at Legend Biotech) and Anneleen Tronquo (Managing Partner for Planning Solutions at Bluecrux) presented the latest insights into their ongoing collaboration at the Gartner Supply Chain Planning Summit in London.
With CAR‑T, one batch equals one patient. There is no finished‑goods inventory and the entire vein‑to‑vein process must be completed in roughly four weeks, including an 11‑day manufacturing cycle once cells arrive at the site. Patient material typically has a viability window of 24 to 72 hours, so delays or missed slots can mean a lost opportunity for treatment or cascading disruptions to other patients’ schedules. In the early commercial phase, Legend Biotech managed a small number of daily runs using whiteboards and spreadsheets, but this quickly became unsustainable as volumes increased and additional sites came online.
The challenge: scale without sacrificing patient access
At launch, Legend Biotech’s primary goal was to maximize patient access in the face of demand that significantly exceeded supply. In 2022, the network started with two patient runs per day and relied heavily on manual problem‑solving, heroic firefighting, and overtime to protect capacity. As more centers were added and a CDMO partner joined the network, it became clear that:
- Every missed manufacturing slot was effectively a missed patient.
- Late‑arriving apheresis material created constant rescheduling pressure on operators and planners.
- Excel‑based schedules and point solutions could not safely handle the constraints and interdependencies across manufacturing, QC, QA, and supporting functions.
James Carr, Associate Director of Supply Chain at Legend Biotech’s Raritan site, summarized the pre-Binocs landscape:
We quickly realized that if we wanted to get to the targets we set for ourselves, Excel wasn’t going to be a sustainable approach.
The solution: Binocs as the ATMP scheduling backbone
Legend Biotech selected Binocs™ from Bluecrux as the backbone for CAR‑T scheduling across its manufacturing network. Binocs is an AI‑powered planning and scheduling platform designed for life science environments, with specific extensions to support autologous cell and gene therapy operations.
- Around 84 process steps per patient
- 70 directly involved specialists per patient
- 9 workstations per patient run
- More than 750 users
- Approximately 18,000 operator tasks and 9,000 equipment slots every month
- 16 patients per day across the network
The team focused on four critical enablers for growth:
Optimizing end-to-end operations
AI-powered, connected scheduling
Automating short‑term scheduling based on operator availability and training, equipment capacity, batch priority, and CGT‑specific rules. Binocs generates integrated schedules with a single click and keeps them aligned with execution data through integrations to systems such as SAP for slot management and MES for activity tracking.
Leveraging data for actionable insights
Growing with commercial expansion
Extending from daily scheduling to mid‑ and long‑term capacity planning so Legend Biotech can confidently plan ramp‑ups, new sites, and CDMO expansion. The same constraint set is applied in tactical and strategic horizons, which supports reliable scale‑up without compromising patient experience.
The impact: from constrained supply to sustainable growth
- Protect near‑100% utilization of autologous manufacturing capacity in the critical early years, when demand was far above supply.
- Start commercial manufacturing in the EU within 24 hours of EMA approval, then continue to ramp capacity while maintaining control over complex, multi‑site operations.
- Treat more than 8,000 patients and build towards a network capacity of up to 10,000 patients per year by the end of 2025, while putting in place the processes and tools needed to optimize cost and patient access as demand continues to grow.
“With Binocs, we can track and resolve conflicts by process or operation in real time, maximizing our slot utilization,” James explained.
What’s next: Scaling across the network
With Phase 1 complete, Legend Biotech is focusing on:
- Phase 2: SAP integration: Automating data inputs to further reduce manual interventions.
- Phase 3: MES integration: Providing real-time manufacturing data to Binocs for even greater scheduling precision.
- Network-wide rollout: Expanding the system to additional nodes and sites based on best practices established at Raritan.
As James Carr outlined at our 2024 Binocs Community Day, “We’ve realized the importance of digitization in the cell and gene therapy industry. Solutions like Binocs are critical to scaling effectively and delivering for our patients.”
Want to learn more about Legend’s journey?
Legend Biotech’s commercial journey with its CARVYKTI therapy–and Binocs’ role in helping them achieve success–was given the spotlight in a recent article from Cell & Gene magazine. Check it out here!