ARTICLES BY LOUIS

• Amgen's Contagious Relationships Spread Industrywide

  5/5/2016

  Amgen is working to spread its supply-chain precepts vertically through the biopharma industry. Rod MacLea is one of those leading the charge. "This knowledge transfer is a big piece we are focusing our efforts on,” he says. “How can we get our industry to look at these ideas and make them mainstream?"

• BioMarin Transforms Supplier M&A Into Joint Ventures

  4/25/2016

  To navigate supplier and CMO consolidation, Isaac Young, senior director, supply chain operations, BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc., offers some advice: Approach your outsourcing relationships like joint ventures. “As you have this greater engagement between two companies,” says Young, “you’re likely to enter an interdependent relationship. Why not acknowledge that rather than try to power-play or position one another?”

• Amgen Looks To Air And Auto For Advice

  4/11/2016

  There are roughly 38,000 components that go into building a commercial airplane; in the automotive industry, it’s about 13,000  to build a car. “That requires just a little bit of coordination,” says Rodney MacLea of Amgen. If companies in those industries effectively manage much larger supply chains, why can’t pharma improve its performance? MacLea and Amgen set out to find out.

• Genentech Speaks The Language Of CMOs

  3/28/2016

  Todd Mabe, head of External Quality, Biologics Drug Substance for Genentech, knows his company has an inherent advantage when contracting for biologics production capacity. “It’s fair to say we’re a popular customer target,” he explains. But that doesn’t make the selection process a walk in the park. 

• Biogen's Outsourcing Trifold For Joint Value Creation

  3/22/2016

  Purposeful segmentation, descriptive scorecards and matrixes, and CMO governance, form a trifold of strategic relationship management for Biogen’s supply chain, says Thomas Holmes, senior director for Global External Manufacturing.  

• In Outsourcing, Genzyme Sees An Advantage

  3/16/2016

  Regarding the outsourcing of biologics manufacturing, Piet Houwen of Sanofi says, “Starting from today, where I’d say the market relationship is sixty percent driven by the sellers, I believe we’ll see a change to a move in the direction of the sponsors.”

• Is The Virtual Biotech Model In Jeopardy?

  3/10/2016

  It appeared we were coasting uninterrupted to a global outsourcing industry fully able to support a wide variety of virtual business models and strategies. But conversations with executives at established biotechs reveal an unfolding reality.

• At Biogen, Three Keys To Outsourcing

  3/2/2016

  Thomas Holmes, senior director for Global External Manufacturing, Biogen, says: (a) cost is not the strategic driver in CMO selection; (b) “dual sourcing” is revenue independent; and (c) the time from drug approval to market launch is all of 48 to 72 hours. 

• If Biopharma CMOs Picked The U.S. President

  2/16/2016

  I dreamt the U.S. presidential election would be decided by the votes of the hard-working women and men of our outsourcing industry. To help us make our choice, it was up to me to record the insights of  an admired CEO of a respected U.S.-based CMO.

• Biopharma Climbs The Serialization Mountain

  2/11/2016

  The data associated with drug-product serialization will be Everest-like; accessing it may pose every bit the security risk. The difference is millions of people may be trying to access the summit … every day. What’s clear today is that a national program for drug serialization looms large on the horizon, and rises, if you will, high into the data clouds.