Tur­ning around a reac­ti­ve phar­ma sup­p­ly chainSur­face Trans­port & Logi­stics

For one lea­ding phar­maceu­ti­cal labo­ra­to­ry, suc­cess and dou­ble-digit sales growth came with a cost: an over­bur­den­ed sup­p­ly chain that threa­ten­ed to redu­ce mar­ket share.

The effort vast­ly impro­ved the company’s plan­ning and exe­cu­ti­on func­tions, they knew that in order to suc­ceed in this era of tech­no­lo­gy their accoun­ting sys­tems nee­ded to be much more robust than what they are. They tur­ned to WP con­sul­ting to impro­ve their accoun­ting sys­tems.

chall­enge

The big­gest chall­enge was that Argu­zo was not uti­li­zing tech­no­lo­gy pro­per­ly. Too much of the work was still being recor­ded manu­al­ly, which meant that the num­bers took a long time to note down and then to be ana­ly­zed. Live data was also not available and decis­i­ons can only be made after all the requi­red data and been recei­ved. This was hol­ding Argu­zo back; they knew they could cor­ner more of the mar­ket if they had the abili­ty to be more mobi­le. The work addres­sed three cri­ti­cal issues for Pharm Ltd.:

  • Impro­ve sales and ope­ra­ti­ons and pro­duc­tion plan­ning:

    The teams focu­sed their efforts on a few of the hig­hest-value S&OP levers in order to review the cur­rent plan­ning pro­cess, iden­ti­fy gaps in the plan­ning infra­struc­tu­re and ana­ly­ti­cal­ly under­stand demand and sup­p­ly varia­bi­li­ty.

  • Deter­mi­ne the right inven­to­ry level:

    With hundreds of medi­ca­ti­ons in the mar­ket, Pharm Ltd. nee­ded a pro­per method to pre­dict and mana­ge their inven­to­ry. Using a mean abso­lu­te per­cen­ta­ge ana­ly­sis (MAPE), the teams defi­ned appro­pria­te levels for raw mate­ri­als and finis­hed pro­ducts by map­ping actu­al ver­sus fore­cas­ted sales on the most important SKUs.

  • Opti­mi­ze the sup­p­ly chain for per­fect order plan­ning:

    The dia­gno­stic deter­mi­ned the stres­sors that affec­ted sales and ser­vice levels. The teams focu­sed on resol­ving issues rela­ted to hig­her-than-nor­mal back-orders and lead times, which stres­sed the enti­re sup­p­ly chain and led to delays in medi­ca­ti­ons rea­ching con­su­mers.

solu­ti­on

The solu­ti­on WP con­sul­ting came up with com­bi­ned cut­ting edge tech­no­lo­gy with real world prac­ti­cal­i­ty. Ever­yo­ne knew that the sys­tems had to be updated, the real chall­enge was updating them wit­hout dis­rupt­ing the who­le orga­niza­ti­on in a nega­ti­ve way. The solu­ti­on was to intro­du­ce pro­per workload manage­ment done through com­pu­ters, while pro­vi­ding mobi­le plat­forms to the stake­hol­ders.

This allo­wed the workers to be invol­ved in the job ins­tead of fee­ling like they had been made red­un­dant by tech­no­lo­gy.

results

Argu­zo employees are now more empowered; Argu­zo also has the bene­fit of gene­ra­ting reports instanta­neous­ly when­ever nee­ded. They can now make decis­i­ons on the fly based on the latest real time data.

The effort vast­ly impro­ved the company’s plan­ning and exe­cu­ti­on func­tions, crea­ted and imple­men­ted a new stock poli­cy that accoun­ted for spe­ci­fic SKUs and key varia­bles, stream­li­ned the order pre­pa­ra­ti­on pro­cess and redu­ced dis­tri­bu­ti­on trans­port times.

By the num­bers, the effort:

  • Redu­ced lead time by 43%
  • Decreased varia­bi­li­ty by 50%
  • Lowe­red the risk of back-order by 95%
  • Increased stock for finis­hed goods by 10%

how can we help you?

Cont­act us at the Con­sul­ting WP office nea­rest to you or sub­mit a busi­ness inquiry online.

Con­sul­ting the­me is an inva­luable part­ner. Our teams have col­la­bo­ra­ted to sup­port the gro­wing field of prac­ti­tio­ners using coll­ec­ti­ve impact. We thought a lot befo­re choo­sing the Finan­cial Word­Press The­me becau­se we wan­ted to sure our invest­ment would yield results.

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Lisa Ken­ney
Chair­man, Blue­wa­ter Corp

Loo­king for a First-Class Busi­ness Plan Con­sul­tant?