“We're keen to get complete access, and full visibility, to our supply chain. This will in fact give us that desired end-to-end supply-chain transparency. It will improve the quality of so many of our decisions,” says Barry Moore, Head of Clinical Supply Chain Solutions for GSK, and Chairman of the Clinical Supply Blockchain Working Group (CSBWG)
It’s been a season of discontent over political plans for drug pricing, health care, and the biopharma industry. However, a CEO of a CDMO isn’t thinking particularly about pharma- and healthcare-related proposals. It’s education that’s on his mind — and finding skilled workers locally.
Growing up on a farm in Idaho, Marty Hughes of Cidara Therapeutics learned this about quality: If you can afford old equipment, you can afford new equipment. Here’s what he means, and some other of his down-home aphorisms to improve your outsourcing activities.
A representative for U.S.-based CDMOs recently testified before Congress regarding the fact 80% of our API is manufactured overseas. If you ask me, they picked the right guy to hear from. Here’s some “supplemental testimony” you’ll want to hear from Edward Price, President & CEO, SEQENS N.A.
Tara Caiano, Virtual Plant Manager, Biogen is a young-woman professional. We featured her a few weeks ago, just after she had relocated from Biogen’s Boston location to manage an external supply-chain partner in Switzerland. She also spoke to me about some of her personal experiences.
Returning manufacturing to the U.S. from overseas is a personal crusade for Harry Moser. He has remedial prescriptions for accomplishing this, and some surprising thoughts on the U.S. President. "If we let China continue to grow as fast as they have, we're toast,” he says. But much of our problem is self-inflicted.
Tara Caiano of Biogen packed up her belongings from her Boston-area homestead to resettle in Switzerland. This “virtual plant manager” was turning the virtual into the physical, you might say, a key concept and role within Biogen’s evolving supply-chain management strategy.
“Our mission is to bring back five million manufacturing jobs. That would balance the goods trade deficit in the U.S.,” says Harry Moser, founder of the Reshoring Initiative. “That deficit is about $800 billion per year. To make that amount of product would take about five million people — a 40% increase in US manufacturing.” Pharma, says Moser, should play a role.
When it comes to outsourcing drug development and manufacturing, while some areas may be reaching a "saturation point" of sorts – a point where a higher percentage of outsourcing can or will not be attained – other areas are in need of a vital ramp up just to keep up.
Have we moved the needle closer to “Biopharma 4.0,” and improved supply chains? Here’s what industry veterans were thinking the beginning of the year. One thing is certain: Pharma and Biotech have different ideas on what happens next.
