Rethinking, Recalibrating, and Retooling

Just in time (JIT) manufacturing aims to reduce flow times within manufacturing systems while cutting response times from suppliers and thence to customers. Under favorable circumstances, it’s a helpful tool for a manufacturer’s overarching strategy. With the emergence of additive manufacturing alongside rising software sophistication, JIT’s dominance of supply chain management appeared assured.

And then COVID-19 hit.

MJH Life Sciences sees CPhI’s global event in Milan, Italy as an ideal meeting place to rethink, recalibrate, and retool for the next decade of pharmaceutical manufacturing expansion. The ability to congregate face-to-face is a clear opportunity to build on that sense of community, which is so strong in the pharmaceutical industry. Among the many trends accelerated by the pandemic, the urgent requirement to build multiple additional supply partners into any future proofed supply and distribution chain has become clear. An anticipated vial shortage never became a critical bottleneck, partly because the raw materials themselves failed to arrive. Large companies had leveraged their outsized influence over suppliers—sometimes at the expense of customers, sometimes countries, and sometimes patients. This reinforces the necessity for face-to-face meetings, to rebuild trust, and to reduce hoarding and the threatening implicit bias of regionalism.

Rejoin the pharmaceutical community in Milan to engage with new partners, and to energize a supply chain infrastructure strategy with inherent adaptability and parallel inputs. Celebrate the obvious successes the industry had in meeting the COVID-19 challenge, and re-tool with a new understanding of how best to face common goals—together.

About the Author

Chris Spivey is editorial director for Pharmaceutical Technology.

Article Details

Pharmaceutical Technology
eBook: October 2021
Pages: 2

Citation

When referring to this article, please cite it as C. Spivey, “Rethinking, Recalibrating, and Retooling," Pharmaceutical Technology eBook (October 2021).