What Is Supply Chain Capacity In 2017?
“Capacity” for outsourcing bio/pharma development and manufacturing has mostly been defined by a strict calculation of how much material a facility (or facilities) can output over a period of time.
And one that doesn’t work today.
Simple definitions of capacity don’t work today because we are in – and have been for a while – an industry of broader competition, employing varying outsourcing models to meet changing drug profiles and markets. What’s changed, in a word, is dynamics.
It’s reached the status of cliché that forecasts are always wrong (it’s just by how much and in which direction that causes concern). Now that acquiescence to inaccuracy of a given product also severely impacts and impedes “drug dynamics” – varying quantity needs, production availability and delivery times – of other products looking for the same capacity.
And added to this type of advanced analysis … is an accelerated pace.
Franco Negron, President, Drug Product Services, Patheon, represented the service providers on that Outsourced Pharma Boston panel. He started with an increasingly common thought experiment: Comparing the bio/pharma supply chain with that of other industries.
“Our industry is probably twenty years behind many other industries, right?” asks Franco specifically in regards to our need for more products, shorter runs of those, and thus increased product turnover.
Anand Ekambaram, Executive Director, Global Technical Operations, Merck, says over the past decade he’s seen some of that mindset shift concerning external manufacturing. He says the former approach to the buyer-seller market for outsourcing services was based on two questions: Do you have the capacity for my product, and how cheaply can you do it?
Receding to give way to what?