About Northline Ops
Northline Ops was built on a simple premise: the people doing the work should be making the decisions.
After years working at some of the most respected MES consulting firms and pharmaceutical manufacturers in the industry, I kept running into the same problem. Technical decisions were being made by people who didn't understand the systems, the shop floor or the operational realities our clients were facing. Account managers with no PAS-X experience, leadership teams that had never configured an MBR or walked a batch execution and consultants answering to people who knew less about the work than they did.
That doesn't work. Not for clients. Not for the consultants trying to deliver quality. And DEFINITELY not for the manufacturing teams depending on these systems to run reliably.
So, I started Northline Ops, a consulting firm where expertise leads. The people designing your MES strategy are the same ones who've spent years in the trenches configuring systems, troubleshooting broken batch records, and training operators.
Who we are
I'm Zac Parrish, and I've spent the last decade working in pharmaceutical manufacturing and MES consulting. I started on the shop floor as a technician, running equipment, executing batches and learning how manufacturing processes work. That foundation shapes everything I do.
Over the years, I've worked my way through upstream and downstream operations, process engineering, SAP management and eventually into MES consulting. Leading PAS-X implementations, designing/redesigning master batch records, replacing legacy systems with PAS-X and helping companies extract maximum value from software that’s been underutilized for years.
I've led consulting teams at Körber Pharma and Sequence, worked across PAS-X versions 3.1.X through 3.2.X/3.3.X and built a reputation for delivering practical, operator-focused solutions that work in regulated GxP environments.
More than credentials, though, what defines my approach is this: I'm a builder. No work that I do is surface level. If I'm going to touch a system, I'm going to understand it completely, deconstruct it, optimize it, and leave it better than I found it. This is a core value of mine whether I'm designing an MBR, troubleshooting an integration or building a company.
I have zero tolerance for sloppy work, vague answers or "good enough" solutions. If something is broken, I’ll tell you. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll say that too. What I won’t do is guess, overcomplicate or waste your time.
What makes us different
We're not a staffing firm. We don't send junior consultants supervised remotely by someone who used to know PAS-X. When you work with Northline, you're working directly with senior-level practitioners who've led implementations, designed batch records and solved the kinds of problems that only come up when you've done this work for years.
We came from the shop floor. Most MES consultants have never run a batch, trained an operator or dealt with the consequences of a poorly designed system. We have. That perspective shapes how we design: lean, logical, and built for the people who have to use it.
We focus on what matters. A lot of consulting firms overcomplicate things because complexity justifies higher fees. We do the opposite. We find the simplest, most effective solution. We reduce batch execution time. We eliminate unnecessary operator steps. We help you use the PAS-X functionality you've already paid for but didn't know existed.
We build relationships, not just projects. Our clients come back because we solve their problems, we’re easy to work with and we don't disappear after go-live. We're here to support you long-term whether that's troubleshooting, optimization, expansion or just being a resource when questions come up.
The team
Northline is built around a core group who have worked together for years: people I trusted to lead the most complex, high-stakes projects. They're the ones who could walk into a broken MES environment, diagnose what was wrong and fix it without hiccups. They're technical, reliable and they care about the quality of their work.
As we grow, we’ll bring on people the same way: one at a time, based on proven capability and only when we have work that dictates the necessity. We don’t make speculative hires nor do we employ filler resources. We are just a team of people who knows what we’re doing.
What we do
We specialize in PAS-X implementations, MBR design and optimization, system troubleshooting, versioning and governance cleanup, legacy MES system-to-PAS-X migrations, project management and functional consulting for pharmaceutical manufacturers that need someone who understands both the software and the operations it exists to support.
If your MES is underperforming or if your batch records are too complex, if your internal team doesn't have the bandwidth or expertise to manage the system - we can help.
Northline Ops. Expertise-driven MES consulting for pharmaceutical manufacturing.