How supply chain digitisation is paving the way to gene therapy

Like many businesses, the major pharmaceutical firms needed to manage their facilities, keep staff safe and maintain resilient supply chains during the pandemic.

The changes they needed to make involved a deep understanding of supply chains using artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics for end-to-end visibility to ensure vaccines and other medicines are delivered to where they are most needed.

During the recent Reuters Supply Chain conference, Linzell Harris, senior vice-president of global supply chain and strategy at AstraZeneca, discussed the role of digitisation in the supply chain and how this has supported the pharmaceutical company’s operations.

Prior to the pandemic, AstraZeneca had set out a strategic path to manage growth. Harris said the company was looking at its past product portfolio to understand how digital capabilities would help it be efficient as operational models shifted.

He added that AstraZeneca looked at blockchain for visibility and tracking, AI to see how fast it could pick up signals of demand changes in markets, and digital twins for scenario and dynamic planning.

With the pandemic, he said the company needed visibility from the raw material supplier’s stage of production all the way to delivery of the finished product to its final destination.

“How fast can you understand risk and see it is increasing and then respond fast enough? You cannot respond after the facts. It needs to be proactive,” he said. “In a pandemic, we truly need to reprioritise production, move inventory levels and change key parameters depending on demand.” 

The company also had to move from monthly cycles of planning to daily changes to the network. From a supply chain perspective, Harris said: “We needed to really focus on synchronisation and on speed and transparency of the total network.”

Discussing the challenges of the lockdown, Steffen Lang, global head of Novartis’ technical operations, said: “We produce more than 70 billion units of medicine and have sites across many countries to supply all markets.” The two key priorities during lockdown were ensuring staff remained safe and the supply of medicines to patients.

Lang said the team swiftly adapted, with some sites delivering increasing demand, and achieved record levels of output: “We continued to receive approval for new products. Launches executed successfully. It was much smoother than we expected.”

Lang believes that a robust supply chain was key to the company’s ability to remain operational and provide medicines during the pandemic. This enabled Novartis to ensure it had adequate stock levels at various stages of manufacturing and gave it the ability to quickly replenish what was being used.

He said that digitisation enabled almost real-time visibility of supply, which was important when borders were locked down. The automation enabled the company to make its end-to-end supply chain less dependent on physical intervention by people.