Effective supply chain management can cut costs, improve service and enhance company revenues; however, the pharma industry has historically been a slow adopter of leading-edge practices. Nikki Withers discussed the fundamentals of contemporary supply chain management with Ed Sweeney, Professor of Logistics and Systems at Aston University, who believes that the gap has started to close between pharma and the recognised global leaders in the sector.
WITH THE ROLLOUT of approved COVID-19 vaccines now underway in many countries, it is imperative that an efficient supply chain is in place to deliver the full potential of the R&D efforts of 2020. “The scale of this challenge may not have crossed some people’s minds,” said Ed Sweeney, Professor of Logistics and Systems and Head of the Department of Engineering Systems & Supply Chain Management (ESSCM) at Aston University in the UK. “The vaccine is not going to be worth anything to us unless, in a UK context, we can distribute it to tens of millions of people and more importantly, in a global context, we can get it safely and quickly to billions.”
