There will be a constant, if not an increasing, need for drug discovery and inventions for medicines. The pharmaceutical industry is only projected to increase its sales in the forthcoming years. According to a survey conducted by Statista, the revenue in the pharmaceutical industry is projected to increase at an annual growth rate of 4.71% by 2029. As a result, manufacturers are rapidly focusing on improving their pharmaceutical supply chain management for faster product delivery and enhancing customer satisfaction. So how does Snowflake, a leading cloud data software, help manufacturers?
Let’s find out!
Challenges Manufacturers Face in Pharmaceutical Supply Chains
With the growing demand for better service from the pharmaceutical industry, manufacturers are constantly facing challenges that might potentially hinder their possibility to deliver products on time. With COVID-19 pandemic and global political disruptions, the already existing challenges in the pharma value chain gained momentum.
Along with the already existing challenges civil unrest and cyberattacks have the potential to wreak havoc on supply chain management in pharmaceutical industry. A resilient supply chain is crucial for both drug production and delivery. Pharmaceutical manufacturers rely on a vast network of suppliers.
This reliance makes it difficult for manufacturers to create robust supply chain resilience. These supply chain challenges can halt production and delay distribution, putting patient care at risk.
Another challenge which manufacturers are facing is when they are outsourcing production to companies with the aim of reducing costs. However, this process increases exposure to risks like global instability, financial troubles, and quality control issues.
Small-scale manufacturers often lack the resources to recover quickly from unforeseen disruptions which makes the supply chain less agile and more prone to delivery delays. This leaves pharmaceutical companies vulnerable to production bottlenecks, shortages, and reputational damage.
As technology advances, so does the field of medicine. The rise of new treatment modalities such as regenerative medicines—stem cell therapies and advanced biologics—has introduced additional layers of complexity in pharmaceutical supply chain. These new innovations have shorter development timelines, specific storage and transport requirements, and are often limited shelf lives, which further creates a strain on the pharmaceutical supply chain.
Delay in pharmaceutical supply chain can result in great losses for both manufacturers and patient care. When dealing with high-value, multibillion-dollar products, manufacturers need to ensure that their inventory is up to date, to avoid any delay. Due to a lack of a complete view of their supply chain, manufacturers are often forced to “strategic stockpiling” in the event of any unforeseen disruptions in the supply chain.
But this kind of “stockpiling” does not fully address the ongoing issue of drug shortages. A lack of diversified suppliers and over-reliance on a small group of partners can lead to supply chain bottlenecks and missed opportunities for innovation, impacting cash flow.
So, how can manufacturers avoid these challenges?
How Can Manufacturers Make Their Supply Chain Resilient Against These Challenges?
Complete Transparency and Visibility
To build a resilient supply chain, manufacturers must have comprehensive visibility into every stage of production—from raw materials to finished products. Understanding supplier relationships, both direct and indirect, helps manufacturers identify areas for improvement. By utilizing data analytics, companies can evaluate various risk factors, that helps them to adhere to regulatory and compliance policies.
Technologies like IoT can increase visibility of the supply chain, enabling manufacturers to track products and materials with greater precision. This prevents manufacturers from incurring any major losses and delay in the pharmaceutical supply chain.
With Kasmo’s accelerator – Supply Chain AI Advisor, manufacturers can avoid pitfalls and gain a comprehensive understanding of their supply chain. This accelerator has specially been tailored for manufacturers to solve their challenges using the latest technology and leveraging the Snowflake AI Data Cloud platform.
Data-driven Decision-making
Stress-Testing and Scenario Planning
With stress-testing the supply chain against a variety of potential disruptions, manufacturers can understand the strength of their value chains to endure disruptions. Simulating different crisis scenarios—such as geopolitical conflicts, natural disasters, or sudden shifts in demand—can help manufacturers identify weaknesses and make decisions about how to mitigate risks.
By recognizing bottlenecks and vulnerabilities early, manufacturers can implement structural changes to make their supply chains more robust. This involves securing alternate suppliers, creating redundant production capabilities, and investing in flexible logistics infrastructure that can pivot quickly in response to unexpected events. Stress-testing also helps manufacturers build greater agility into their pharmaceutical supply chain, allowing companies to respond to crises more efficiently and minimize downtime.
Building Supply Chain Resilience
Building supply chain resilience should be a top priority at every level of a pharmaceutical company’s decision-making process. Manufacturers need to ensure that the leadership, employees and stakeholders are equipped with the right data tools to create strategies for building resilient pharmaceutical supply chain strategies. These strategies include developing internal capabilities for assessing risks, analyzing data and building contingency plans.
By investing in training their employees, pharmaceutical manufacturing companies can encourage them to use advanced analytics to address potential risks. Developing this capability across the organization ensures that risks are anticipated, identified, and mitigated early, reducing the impact of disruptions on production, costs, and customer satisfaction.
Build Long-Term Relationships with Suppliers
In the pharmaceutical industry, long-term relationships with suppliers are essential for maintaining a stable and reliable supply chain. While diversification and flexibility are critical, ongoing collaboration and trust-building with key suppliers remain indispensable. Maintaining regular communication and engaging in problem-solving with suppliers ensures that quality standards, regulatory requirements, and technical specifications are met without interruption.
Data-driven solutions can improve collaboration by enabling better communication, increasing trust, and ensuring transparency. These technologies also facilitate real-time updates on production schedules, inventory levels, and quality assurance, which help mitigate risks associated with delayed or substandard deliveries.
How Data from Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Helps Manufacturers?
- With data from the pharmaceutical supply chain, manufacturers can forecast demands, helping them to align production with actual drug and therapy needs, reducing both oversupply and shortages. Analyzing data also helps assess the time that it will take to keep the inventory constant during any supply chain disruptions. This visibility empowers manufacturers to take proactive measures to mitigate risks and maintain drug availability.
- Analyzing data helps pharmaceutical companies track inventory more effectively by predicting how long a product will stay in stock and identifying items that have been sitting too long without selling. This insight supports better management of production resources, optimizing inventory levels and reducing waste, ensuring the production is aligned with demand, minimizing stockouts and excess inventory.
- Data analytics can also significantly enhance transportation efficiency, helping pharmaceutical companies reduce costs associated with logistics. By optimizing load planning, consolidating shipments, and improving in-transit visibility, manufacturers can streamline transportation. This cuts costs and improves the overall speed and reliability of the supply chain.
- Analyzing manufacturing data also helps to improve operational efficiency and reduce the risk of unplanned downtime. Sensors embedded in manufacturing equipment can provide real-time data, predicting maintenance needs. Additionally, these sensors can also monitor production quality, ensuring pharmaceutical manufacturers are following industry standards and detecting quality control issues early, preventing defects and improving the consistency of drug production.
- Data analysis also helps pharmaceutical manufacturing companies lower production costs, boost operational efficiency, and enhance supply chain resilience. By using analytics to model and optimize their network, companies can identify the most cost-effective ways to source materials, distribute products, and mitigate supply chain disruptions. This approach improves overall supply chain agility, ensuring the ability to adapt quickly to changes or disruptions.
What Role Does Snowflake Play in Building a Resilient Pharmaceutical Supply Chain?
Snowflake Data Cloud empowers pharmaceutical manufacturers to fully leverage their data by supporting diverse data sources, including structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data, for real-time supply chain visibility and secure partner collaboration. Its near-infinite scalability enables businesses to store and process vast amounts of data efficiently. Its advanced security features like access controls, dynamic masking, and encryption ensures sensitive data stays protected. Additionally, Snowflake supports automation and IoT applications, providing manufacturers to build a flexible pharmaceutical supply chain.
Here are some more points that makes Snowflake the most suitable choice to optimize your pharmaceutical supply chain:
- Snowflake’s Snowgrid enables seamless, secure data sharing across regions, improving collaboration and business continuity.
- Snowflake’s scalable platform and Snowpark reduces data processing times, reducing the time taken to generate insights for decision-making.
- Through faster analytics, you can save unnecessary overhead costs and improve operational efficiency.
- Snowflake’s easy-to-use platform minimizes maintenance and eliminates data silos.
- Real-time data access and faster processing help improve the prediction of any imminent risk and improves visibility, enhancing decision-making.
- Cross-region, cross-cloud capabilities of Snowflake ensure secure and efficient data sharing while maintaining integrity across global teams.
- Snowflake’s scalable infrastructure can support your increasing data needs and adapt to evolving supply chain demands.
- Snowflake’s automated maintenance and simplified database management reduces operational overhead, allowing you to focus on strategic initiatives.
