Like other industries, pharmaceutical also has a supply chain department that performs material management for the entire process life cycle. This department is tasked with supplying the required raw material before it is required for producing the pharma product.
The success of a pharmaceutical organization goes hand in hand with developing, managing and controlling an efficient supply chain department. It can make or break the target market of a pharma organization and can also act as an efficient tool for discovering new markets.
The supply chain department is tasked with arranging the desired raw material and providing the required storage conditions – after the product leaves the manufacturing facility until it reaches the end-user by complying with all the regulatory regulations.
What is supply chain department in pharmaceutical industry?
The pharmaceutical supply chain manages material flow from purchasing raw materials to delivering products in final finished form to its customer. It includes planning and executing all the related activities.
Various vital components and stakeholders in the pharmaceutical supply chain must coordinate, and more importantly, pharma organizations must adhere to regulatory regulations at every stage of material management for drug safety and compliance.
The working cycle of a pharmaceutical supply chain can commonly be divided into the following steps.
Planning
Planning is the foremost critical and vital part of a pharma supply chain. It defines the success of a supply chain and ensures it’s resilient to changing market dynamics. If it is not performed efficiently, it will destroy the entire production cycle.
Planning includes practices and procedures for sourcing raw materials to deliver the final product to the consumer. It focuses on
How the capacity of a pharma manufacturer is maximum utilized without having over and under inventory levels
How the inventory turnover rate can be improved
Reducing lead time, in the minimum time possible, by designing policies and systems to solve regulatory and inventory problems
Solving capacity issues by devising organization-wide and long-term systems
Issues related to lost sales and increasing market shares
Procurement
The next step in the pharmaceutical supply chain is procurement. It is critical because this step indicates the capacity of a pharma organization to adhere to its sourcing policies, laid down in the planning stage.
The primary process in this process is the supplier selection for supplying the required goods and services. The selection process is based on
The ability of a supplier to fulfil the requirement
Cost-effectiveness, provided the supplier fulfils all the process, product or technical requirements
The supplier that takes less time to deliver the goods or services
Production
The production process starts after the pharma organization receives the raw material. The production is planned and executed according to the market’s requirements.
Production includes
Receiving the raw material and storing it in recommended storage conditions
production planning according to the demands of supply chain department
manufacturing operations according to the approved product plan
Ensuring quality on plant floor by frequent visit by quality department
Quality inspection of the pr...
Read More
(All Rights Reserved)