Posts categorized as 'Pharma and life sciences supply chain management'

Supply chain pain points: Life sciences

AlexaCheater

8 life sciences-specific challenges and how to overcome them

Life sciences supply chain

As I mentioned in the first blog of this supply chain pain points series, working in supply chain is tough business. Every company’s supply chain is unique, with its own set of challenges and solutions. But when it comes to life sciences supply chains, things just seem to be a whole lot more complicated.

Regulations, expirations and generic and brand name labels add a certain complexity to the mix not always seen in other industries. Branded pharmaceuticals tend to be high margin products, while generics are lower margin with a large volume of new product introductions (NPIs). With an extremely competitive landscape, mergers and acquisitions are common, leading to a multitude of disparate enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, wreaking havoc on end-to-end supply chain visibility. Here are a few more obstacles those of you working supply chain in life sciences have to contend with.

Lack of robust sales and operations planning (S&OP) tools

Traditional S&OP tools don’t always account for the specific needs of the life sciences supply chain. S&OP in this space requires volume level planning at multiple hierarchies and provide mix level detail including material and capacity constraints at the site and SKU level.

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[Video] Sanofi Genzyme trends in pharmaceutical supply chains

MelissaClow

This blog is part of a video interview series. Check out the video below as well as links to other supply chain practitioner and Kinaxis executive interviews.

Merging two companies is seldom easy, but it’s even more difficult when their supply chains are highly dissimilar, says Jim Calarese, director of supply chain systems at Sanofi Genzyme.

The pharmaceutical company is the result of a takeover by Sanofi in 2001. The parent company’s supply chain was “plant-centric,” Calarese says. By contrast, Genzyme’s was completely end-to-end in nature. “Theirs was easier than ours.”

No pharmaceutical supply chain is without its challenges. Typically, supply chains are extended, lead times are long and a thicket of government regulations combine to present some steep challenges. Genzyme had diligently worked to have a total view of its supply chain as it developed and marketed drugs for rare diseases, multiple sclerosis, and oncology and immunology markets.

Sanofi Genzyme: Trends in Pharmaceutical Supply Chains

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The 5 ‘C’s’ for CMO Relationships in Pharmaceutical Supply Chain

BillDuBois

Pharmaceutical supply chainI recently attended the LogiPharma conference in Princeton, NJ to hear a number of speakers give their thoughts on the state of the pharmaceutical supply chain. Of particular interest was a session on Contract Manufacturing Operations (CMO) relationships with Michael Daly, Director of Supply Chain for Valeant Pharmaceuticals. He talked about the 5 C’s for a CMO relationship in pharma.

There was agreement among many at the conference that pharma is a bit behind the high tech and automotive industries when it comes to supply chain efficiencies. To their credit, those same individuals acknowledged they were looking to other industries for best practices. High tech and automotive have long realized they could drive efficiencies up and costs down by not doing everything from scratch.

In many cases within high tech and automotive, the leaders in supplier relationships have developed interactive supplier engagements that allow for easy communication between customer and supplier. These improved supplier relationships have enabled the easy sharing of purchase order information, forecast requests and the ability to initiate collaborative reviews and adjustments. It’s become easier for the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) to track supplier commitments and get alerts to gaps between request and commit dates, so action can be taken to avoid shortage conditions.

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State of the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain: Key Takeaways from LogiPharma US 2016

Dr. MadhavDurbha

Pharmaceutical Supply ChainPart of what makes my job very exciting is attending conferences. These events provide great opportunities to share, learn, network, and have fun. Earlier this week, I attended the LogiPharma conference, a wonderful event for supply chain professionals working in the pharmaceutical industry. Apart from taking part in numerous interactive presentations and roundtables, I had the opportunity to host a luncheon alongside my colleague, Bill Dubois, for a packed room of pharmaceutical industry executives and SCM practitioners.

All-in-all, it was a great validation of my point of view about where the pharma industry is with regards to its supply chain challenges, maturity and where it needs to go. In this blog, I want to share some key challenges faced by the pharma industry and pharmaceutical supply chains. And, in a future blog I will share some recommendations in light of these challenges:

1. Revenue pressures: With several blockbuster drug patents expiring (a.k.a. “patent cliff”) and with patent extensions harder to come by, large pharma companies are looking for opportunities to unlock additional value within their enterprises and across the value network as revenues remain under pressure.

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A perfect supply chain?

MattBenson

Dabbawala supply chainIf your 3PL supply chain problem was to deliver 400,000 items daily from supplier to customer and your on-time in full metric was a six-sigma target standard of 1 failure per million, how would you do it?

What If I was to also constrain the resources you had at your disposal and said you only had 5000 transportation vehicles and your delivery slot was just 1 hour and that your delivery window was always 12pm until 1pm? What if I was then to say that you had no technology at your disposal to manage it and your only transportation methods were bicycles, trains and feet and you had to do it on a budget of 33 cents per delivery?

Well, that’s what the Dabbawalas in India have been doing in Mumbai for over 100 years – delivering meals direct to workers and school desks from the family home with an OTIF of 99.99 %. They don’t use technology but what they do have is a tried and trusted set of highly efficient robust procedures that govern how they manage their work. It’s a methodology that has been established and passed down from generation to generation and has stood the test of time.

So, why don’t organisations with similar problems just invest time in improving their working procedures? Why do we even need technology? Well, the answer in reality is that we really do need both – not all of our problems are only 3PL issues with supply chains having such stable demand signals – same item, same quantity, to the same customer, pretty much every day. Not all of our supply chains have a zero inventory, stable sub-contracted supply – it’s a relatively quick production process to make an Indian meal (2-3 hours), freshly cooked every day often using Tandoor ovens. In addition, the majority of our distribution networks are geographically wider and much more complex.

Away from Mumbai we’re at the PIMS conference this week in London discussing Pharmaceutical supply chain problems with some key players in the market. The common themes we are hearing are:

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A Brief Report on the Pharmaceutical Innovation in Manufacturing Summit

HansVelthuizen

This week I attended the 5th Annual Pharmaceutical Innovation in Manufacturing Summit near Heathrow. Although the conference was situated in the Edwardian style Radisson hotel neatly decorated with Persian rugs, brass-railed staircases and chandeliers, the location stood in sharp contrast with the innovative character of the Summit.

The objective of the summit was to provide an open forum for highly insightful presentations that span a broad range of topics critical to the biologics field. It was a two-day gathering dedicated to cutting edge technology, innovation and strategy across the entire small molecule & biopharmaceutical manufacturing process.

As good as the sessions were, I always find the networking opportunities the most useful at these kinds of summits. There was plenty of room during dinners and lunch breaks to discuss new ideas with industry peers. Seeing a lot of familiar faces you realize that the pharmaceutical supply chain is a small world.

Distinctive of this summit was the wide variety of topics and themes that passed these two days. Topics that were discussed ranged from strategic supply chain challenges to operational packaging and labeling processes and techniques. While there are undoubtedly some topics relevant for each participant, it seemed very well possible this broad setup of event missed its goal.

Kinaxis was present with a booth and Laura Dionne, Senior Director, Worldwide Operations Planning at TriQuint gave a well-received presentation titled ‘A Healthy Dose of Chips: Supply Chain Lessons for Life Sciences’. In this presentation Laura discussed the similarities between pharmaceutical and Semiconductor supply chains and also the solutions that can be applied for addressing similar challenges.

triquint supply chain journey

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A Healthy Dose of Chips: Supply Chain Lessons for Life Sciences at the 2015 Pharmaceutical Innovation in Manufacturing Summit

MelissaClow

A quick post to let our readers know that we’ll be at the 2015 Pharmaceutical Innovation in Manufacturing Summit (PIMS). This year’s event will be held at the Radisson Blu Edwardian Hotel, London, February 10-11, 2015.

If you plan to attend the conference, join Laura Dionne, Senior Director, Worldwide Operations Planning, TriQuint as she presents ‘Laura DionneA Healthy Dose of Chips: Supply Chain Lessons for Life Sciences from a High Tech Veteran’ on Tuesday, February 10th at 2:15pm.

Session Details

What can a lifelong Semiconductor Supply Chain expert have to say about Pharmaceuticals? A surprising amount it seems! In this presentation we will explore the similarities between these supply chains and also the solutions that can be applied for addressing these challenges.

Laura Dionne, a 33 year Semiconductor Veteran and supply chain change agent will discuss the commonalities including the challenge of planning a wealth of products that can be manufactured from a singular base material, how quality creates an underlying tension that drives customer fulfillment and margins, and also how inventory strategy can make the difference between profit and loss. Cross over of experts between industries is not anything new to the supply chain, but few would recognize what can be learned about the two industries that have shaped the global supply chain… Pharmaceuticals and Semiconductors.

We’ll be posting Laura’s presentation deck along with a recap of the conference, so stay tuned!

Happy Monday all!

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Kinexions, a tale of growth and potential

TrevorMiles

building-kinexions-trevor-milesI’m on my way back from Tokyo where I attended our user conference, Kinexions Tokyo, in Japan, just 5 weeks after our Kinexions North America user conference in San Diego. As a side note, I had a stunning view of Mount Fuji from my hotel room on two of the three days I was in Tokyo. I have become so lazy about carrying a camera with me that I could only capture this photo with my smart phone.

If attendance at both conferences is anything to go by, 2015 is going to be even busier than 2014. In both cases we had about 50% increase in attendance over last year. In both cases we had the largest contingent of prospects ever and the largest contingent of partners ever. We also had the most customer presentations with 11 case studies in total including:

• ASICS
• Avaya
• Buffalo Technologies
• Dow AgroSciences
• Keysights
• Schneider Electric
• TE Connectivity
• Qualcomm

Kinexions `14 graphic recording

Kinexions graphic recording

The diagram above captures the essential elements of the San Diego conference in which you can see how important the customer case stories were to the overall conference. What struck me most is the diversity of the industries and the breadth of supply chain maturity represented. Before I comment further on specific stories, let me state that while the destination reached is important, it is the distance traveled that most impresses me. In other words, while I love the stories of the customers that are doing amazing stuff, it is the one that changed the most that really impresses me. For example, you only have to look at the Gartner Top 25 to see that Apple has been number one for the past 5 or so years. Yawn. I’m always looking for the companies that have started low in the ranking and are making rapid progress up the ranking. Change is hard, but change is necessary. It is easy to follow, and a lot more difficult to lead. Or, as Angel Mendez of Cisco likes to say, yesterday’s stretch goal is today’s benchmark.

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