Faced With Complex Challenges, Life Sciences Companies Must Embrace Digitalization

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Faced With Complex Challenges, Life Sciences Companies Must Embrace Digitalization

2 minute de lecture

Supply chain optimization might be a timeless concept, but the way we define and achieve it evolves over time — depending on demand levels, supply shortages, the competitive landscape, geopolitical conditions, technology innovations, regulations and other challenges. 

 

The life sciences industry — including pharmaceutical, medical technology and healthcare equipment manufacturers — is a great example. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, life sciences supply chains were necessarily hyper-focused on ramping up production volumes and accelerating delivery. Pharma, Medtech and healthcare manufacturers around the world bolted into action to exercise their collective strengths to combat a dire threat to global health and the life sciences supply chain.

 

Today, life sciences companies face an entirely new competitive landscape. They must find faster, more efficient strategies to surgically and profitably match supply with fluctuating demand and ensure operational excellence across their value chain. 

 

This has become incredibly challenging as supply chains grow more complex, SKUs proliferate and regulatory requirements increase. Product expiration dates, as well as temperature control and other special handling requirements, add to the challenge of accurately matching inventory to market needs. In addition, many companies lack the real-time visibility and collaboration needed across internal functions, as well as across multi-tier supply chain networks, hampering their ability to adapt strategies in real time wherever and whenever market forces require.

 

And let’s not forget increasing supply chain disruptions, from new tariffs and sociopolitical uncertainty to extreme weather, labor strikes and port closures. Did we mention inflation and rising cost pressures?

 

 

Create an agile supply chain despite new tariffs

Building a more agile supply chain is necessary for companies across all industries. And with all the tariffs changing how supply chains produce and ship their products, now is the best time to start.

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The encouraging news is that life sciences companies can have the key tools and capabilities they need to adapt their supply chain to these new, increasingly complex challenges today. From predicting disruptions in advance to managing inventory with surgical precision, Blue Yonder’s artificial intelligence (AI)-driven life sciences solutions enable competitive advantage to drive increased revenues, profits and customer satisfaction.

 

Data-driven demand and supply planning, adaptive inventory optimization, connected operations and multi-tier collaboration capabilities position life sciences companies to win, despite volatility and disruptions. Supply chain digitalization and real-time visibility enable them to achieve product availability, cost efficiency and patient-centric outcomes, while also maintaining regulatory compliance in today’s unpredictable industry landscape.

 

Get started with the three key areas to optimize 

 

There’s no doubt that digitalization can position life sciences companies to thrive, even in today’s uncertain industry landscape. But it can be unclear where to begin. Based on Blue Yonder’s experience working with life sciences industry leaders, there are three digital capabilities that drive a quick, meaningful impact in your supply chain digital transformation journey. 

 

 

1. Strategic, integrated planning

 

Life sciences manufacturers have learned firsthand that agility and resilience in the face of supply chain disruptions are critical. But being laser focused on achieving operational goals, creating competitive advantage and adhering to industry regulations on a global scale are equally imperative. How can they tackle it all? A strategic starting point is with dynamic, AI-powered integrated demand and supply planning.

 

While manual planning processes can take weeks to respond to upstream and downstream surprises, today’s “always on” digital decision engines continuously and automatically course correct in mere seconds, based on matching real-time data with longer-term strategic goals. The supply chain pivots autonomously, building muscle memory via machine learning (ML). 

 

Advanced, AI-powered optimization engines continuously balance demand and supply by optimizing the end-to-end supply chain for materials, capacity, labor, inventory and production schedules. Meanwhile, digital forecasting engines ingest hundreds of demand-driving variables in real time, across SKUs and markets, so the supply chain can pivot intelligently, quickly and strategically in response. What-if scenario planning capabilities consider a range of options and automatically choose the optimal combination of minimal waste, maximum margin, fast inventory turns, and high levels of availability and customer service.

Drive insightful planning decisions

Discover how Blue Yonder customers with integrated demand and supply planning solutions have increased forecast accuracy by 10 to 20 points and reduced inventory levels by 10% to 25%.

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2. End-to-end real-time visibility and traceability

 

Whether geographically dispersed or engaged in nearshoring/onshoring strategies to safeguard against supply chain disruption, the complexities of global inventory management for life sciences manufacturers are never-ending. Ensuring operational efficiency, profitability and global regulatory compliance, necessitates real-time, multi-tier visibility and traceability across the network.

 

Blue Yonder Network end-to-end intelligent control tower capabilities are the perfect solution here. No matter the route products are taking to market, AI-enabled control towers provide near real-time monitoring and status updates, track-and-trace capabilities, a clear chain of custody and automated workflows built for specific compliance requirements.

 

Manual methods and human analysis are insufficient to manage the enormously complex activities associated with regulatory compliance, quality control, product expiry and waste, and serialization. Instead, life sciences companies need to embrace the power of modern supply chain solutions to make real-time traceability easier, faster and more connected. Typical benefits Blue Yonder customers have experienced include a 15% to 20% improvement in working capital, a 90% reduction in shortages and stock-outs, and up to a 100% increase in on-time shipments.

 

 

3. Synchronized execution for operational efficiency

 

The value of digitalization extends to address the challenges faced by synchronizing logistics workflows across warehouse, transportation and order management. AI and ML capabilities enable transportation management, warehouse management and order management solutions to ingest vast amounts of real-time data, analyze it and make optimal decisions in response and then execute on those decisions autonomously. 

Digital warehouse management system (WMS) solutions are purpose-built to align resources, robotics and physical space for effective inventory management and order fulfillment. Advanced transportation management system (TMS) solutions are designed for multimodal global transportation, with advanced optimization capabilities that enhance routing, load-building and other daily activities to balance low cost with high asset utilization and service levels. Intelligent order management solutions optimize the entire order fulfillment process with real-time visibility into inventory allocation, and order and shipping status — even for the most complex order configurations, improving decision-making and order accuracy.

 

The key to optimizing the true value of synchronized execution and operational efficiency is when  these solutions are digitally connected, leveraging a shared dataset on a shared platform to enable real-time visibility and collaboration across the network. 

 

Regardless of the challenge — temperature control requirements, product shelf life, shipping route disruptions, synchronized execution of interoperable logistics solutions on the Blue Yonder platform allow the degree of precision and control that’s demanded in the life sciences industry today. Noted operational efficiency improvements include up to a 40% increase in transportation service levels, and an 8% reduction in logistics network spend. The WMS has increased throughput by 50% while cutting fulfillment, storage and handling costs in half.

 

 

Start realizing the benefits of digitalization today 

 

At Blue Yonder, we believe the time is now for life sciences supply chains to shift from a reactive mindset to an opportunistic one. Thanks to technology innovation, disruptions can be predicted, end-to-end visibility can be achieved and AI can turn the supply chain into a powerful growth driver. Why not contact Blue Yonder today to start realizing the incredible power of digitalization in your own supply chain?