SIDDHA GLOBAL is presently one of India’s leading stockist, Branded Pharmaceutical Exporter and Pharma Merchant Exporter for Private Label Pharma Manufacturing. We have our biggest market in EMEA as Branded Pharma Exporter and Branded Medicine Exporter. The pharmaceutical business is perhaps the most challenging of all life sciences industries. It plays a critical role by delivering health care and medicines that keep millions alive and healthy. But at the same time, it is one of the most regulated and scrutinized lines of business. Due to its far-reaching impact, every ounce of process efficiency gained literally saves lives.
This process efficiency is made possible by integrating digitized solutions, and their impact has already been evident in manufacturing and R&D processes. However, one area that still needs a digitized facelift is supply chain and logistics. It is well and good to produce ground-breaking drugs in a continuous manufacturing manner, but these drugs must also reach all geographies with unique regulatory compliance mandates.
Automating in-house transport
In the pharma manufacturing “facility of the future”—and in some facilities already today—automated systems will move raw materials or semi-finished goods from the warehouse to the production line or between departments, and they may also move finished goods from the line to the warehouse. Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) have an intelligent navigation system with built-in sensors, cameras, and software that allows them to “identify their surroundings and take the most efficient route to their destinations, safely avoiding obstacles and people,” says Ed Mullen, vice-president of sales for North America at Denmark-based Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR).
Automating a warehouse
In warehouses for finished pharmaceutical goods, putaway and retrieval, as well as functions such as case picking, can be automated. Technologies available include storage/retrieval machines (S/RMs), which replace work conventionally done by standard fork-trucks, and gantry or articulating-arm robots for case picking activities, which are generally combined with conveyance and sortation equipment, explains Dan Labell, president of Westfalia Technologies.
Key focus areas of digitized operations
In order to reap the full range of benefits of digitization, pharma companies are integrating sensors throughout the supply chain to react better to dynamic market changes. This would reduce lead times for drug deliveries, and prevent drug stock outs, thereby helping save more lives and provide proactive health care to people. Such technologies provide end-to-end supply chain integration and network scalability. So, whether it is a supplier of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) or a clinical dispenser, everyone can be on the same page irrespective of what applications they use. Integrating related technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA), cognitive intelligence, machine learning and data analytics can also enable companies to streamline various business processes, ranging from production to sales. This has a cascading effect on the simplification of government and corporate compliance commitments, by defining custom business rules and workflows.
Balancing demand and supply
Like all other industries, the pharma business operates on the fundamental principle of supply and demand. Digitized operations can allow these companies to monitor different market forces and dynamically respond to unexpected events, and reduce the pressure of rising prices. The industry is in the midst of a systemic shift from batch to continuous processing, and the key here is to produce low volumes efficiently. Personalized medicine is also driving evolution in the industry. Leveraging technology can thus help pharma tackle complex product portfolios by segmenting their supply chain. It can provide the much-needed transparency that can eliminate counterfeited drugs. The end game is better quality control and visibility, and digitized operations can monitor all transit activities to achieve these.
In order to reap the full range of benefits of digitization, pharma companies are integrating sensors throughout the supply chain to react better to dynamic market changes. This would reduce lead times for drug deliveries, and prevent drug stock-outs, thereby helping save more lives and provide proactive health care to people. Such technologies provide end-to-end supply chain integration and network scalability. So, whether it is a supplier of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) or a clinical dispenser, everyone can be on the same page irrespective of what applications they use. Integrating related technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA), cognitive intelligence, machine learning and data analytics can also enable companies to streamline various business processes, ranging from production to sales. This has a cascading effect on the simplification of government and corporate compliance commitments, by defining custom business rules and workflows.
Available-to-promise (ATP) function, for instance, responds to customer order inquiries based on resource availability. In traditional software, ATP is fundamentally a rules-based calculation based on theoretical lead times and allocation rules that are variable and volatile. Using those data points in ATP calculations can result in wrong ATP dates.
In contrast, AI can automatically generate a “supply chain map,” showing details about an order that include metrics like allocated quantity and expected delivery date. The AI system then delivers highly accurate recommendations and predictions based on machine learning and data science, not simple rules-based ATP calculations. ATP is just one example. AI’s powerful cognitive automation capabilities can be applied to all supply chain processes, from demand and supply forecasting to inventory optimization, manufacturing performance, procurement automation and supplier reliability assessments in pharmaceutical supply chain and more.