Steering through turbulence with IoT
Volatility and shifting trends in the industry have made the present pharmaceuticals distribution network challenging to navigate. However, with difficulty comes opportunity.
A growth in mergers and acquisitions, a shift to outsourcing corporate services, changes in patient preferences, and operational issues are all posing challenges for pharma firms.
The rise in economic function outsourcing and mergers and acquisitions has driven many core business operations to rely on outdated, older data systems. As a result, data has become fragmented between producers, distributors, pharmacies, health care centers systems, and third-party logistics providers.
Furthermore, tailored medicines have become increasingly popular in the industry. Individualized cell and gene treatments, for example, add to supply chain complexity as future production becomes more tailored and manufactured to order. To be feasible, this transition to personalized treatments necessitates exact product temperatures and location data. Companies’ capacity to make and transport medications efficiently are being harmed by a lack of visibility into production, aged equipment, and an underutilized workforce. Pharmaceuticals businesses lose about $15 billion a year due to product losses caused by difficulties like temperature changes during transit.
The disrupting effect of the COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the current supply chain issues.
The outbreak has had a direct effect on the logistics of getting pharmaceuticals to patients, disturbed the ability to plan and schedule production, and made estimating demand and capacity even more difficult.
Applying Internet of Things (IoT) technology to enhance how medications are made and delivered to patients can help businesses navigate industry upheavals. The use of IoT will enable a more agile supply chain that can respond quickly to the industry turmoil.
Embracing the disruption
We are entering a period in which emergent technologies are maturing. The Internet of Things has evolved from a futuristic forecast to the foundation of the networked society and a critical component of smart manufacturing and the contemporary supply chain.
Information will flow easily from operations and equipment into the fingertips of employees, administration, and executive leadership, allowing for end-to-end transparency and real-time, evidence-based judgment. Connecting, tracking, and analyzing operations from procurement through storage and management will give a compliance audit trail while enhancing stock and supply control. Insights will improve the insights gained from IoT data to improve the drug quality of the product, shorten lead times, predict equipment failures, forecast downstream product requirements, and maximize capacity utilization.
Addressing pain points
By integrating diverse data sources, allowing insights, and offering optimization possibilities, IoT has the potential to increase the pharma supply chain and efficiency.
Companies will be able to collect data on factors such as machine utilization, equipment health, processing conditions, energy usage, and interplant logistics using a mixture of hard and delicate sensors. Installing sensors on fill-finish line equipment allows producers to track equipment availability in a region where failure has a direct influence on the amount and timing of product reaching patients. Unlocking additional data points also enables the surveillance of important equipment like autoclaves and centrifuges, as well as insights into process variables like lyophilizer moisture content.
Employees can monitor activities away from the manufacturing floor and even remotely thanks to better available data provided by IoT. This available production information, when used for reports, allows a smart factory to monitor activities in real-time and improve physical process control of medication manufacture and material flow.
Outside of interplant activities, IoT enables enterprises to use cross-platform open-source data platforms to integrate the flow of information from suppliers to consumers. Personalized treatments, such as cancer treatments, will be able to take advantage of a densely integrated information infrastructure to transport information effectively across unaffiliated institutions such as hospitals, laboratories, and logistical centers.
Controlling the flow of information and bringing disparate sources altogether adds value to an organization’s internal operations. Mixing various data kinds yields previously unavailable insight. This new, interconnected digital environment will make it possible to offer therapies to patients in a much more timely and secure manner.
Analytics can help to increase the value created by IoT in the pharmaceutical supply chain. Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) can anticipate equipment problems, foresee batch outputs, effectively schedule equipment, and estimate downstream product requirements using analytics. It is expected that more than half of pharma and biotech companies would use prescriptive analytics and AI.
The accessibility of this forward-looking data allows for smart manufacturing techniques that increase overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), profitability, and labor productivity.
AR/VR (augmented reality/virtual reality) boosts the value of a digital IoT transition for a distribution chain. These technologies enable better data visibility in a hands-free setting, more effective training for operations staff, and virtual help and problem-solving for operation vital employees.
As the business becomes nimbler and more reactive, starting on the IoT path will operate as a distribution network acceleration, bringing the plan, source, make and deliver operations closer to harmony with the strategic priorities of the organization.
There are no shortcuts
The solid evidence stage is where 30% of IoT projects flop. This isn’t a criticism of the technology; numerous deployments have been successful.
There have been numerous successful deployments. Notwithstanding poorly executed procedures, ambiguous roles and duties, poorly structured organizational setup, and other difficulties, too many firms attempt to embark on the journey. Before the digital transformation can occur, these issues must be addressed.
Starting an IoT journey is a major, corporation-wide undertaking that necessitates considerable funding and attention from numerous departments. Because the various stakeholder teams come from vastly diverse environments, it is vital to establish a commonality right away.
By enabling shop floor stakeholders can provide intellectual leadership and direction to the workforce delivering on the IoT journey, an IoT Center of Excellence (CoE) will align the plan with implementation. Allowing members of the team to collaborate with end customers in tandem develops a culture of continual learning and communication.
Adoption is just as crucial as implementation. IoT technology can only provide maximum value to an enterprise if it is deployed efficiently throughout the distribution chain. It is critical to examine necessary adjustments to SOPs and working methods to effectively implement technology. This emphasis on acceptance guarantees that the program stays on track for scalability and value realization.
The IoT journey
Frame the CoE scope and scale: Pharma companies should start by learning about the existing state and future trajectory of the distribution chain wherein the CoE will function. To evaluate digital readiness and determine where digital skills coincide with difficulties facing the firm, a complete diagnostic investigation is undertaken. This first step in the digital transformation establishes expectations inside the company about the amount of funding and infrastructure upgrades that will be needed.
Establish the CoE operating structure: The company must now design its processes to be able to perform now that expectations and direction have been established. To develop cross-functional teams that reduce segmented work, reporting lines and team structures inside the CoE should be redrawn with digital in mind. These cross-functional teams will be able to develop capabilities that empower people all through the distribution chain with the help of agile education. Agile SOPs that connect with the digital mentality and promote openness should be developed to empower CoE participants. It’s also crucial to assess the CoE’s success. To comprehend the team’s accomplishments and highlight areas for development, management must establish and analyze key performance metrics (KPIs).
After establishing agile working practices, pharma companies must prepare their technological infrastructure by selecting a development platform, establishing software architectural guidelines, and developing advanced analytics. To allow data to flow between various source systems and organizations, cross-platform frameworks must be built. It is critical to integrate the organization’s goals with its present digital maturity and technological demands to make the best choices. An evaluation can aid in making decisions that have a direct bearing on the developmental viability of IoT applications.
Identify and launch IoT pilots: After establishing a robust operating framework, the next stage is to create strategic priorities for IoT activities. The steering committee and shop floor end users can establish the direction with a top-down/bottom-up strategy, lowering the possibility of a one-off solution being developed. For IoT app development, many firms striving to increase smart manufacturing capabilities will review present processes and prioritize quality control, energy monitoring, predictive maintenance, and supply chain. When selecting pilots, consider factors such as simplicity of distribution, networking scalability, and commercial value.
It’s time to get to work on designing IoT apps as prototypes or proofs-of-concept when possibilities have been discovered and decided upon.
Before the technology is deployed across the enterprise, pilots are critical for obtaining stakeholder feedback and should be evaluated to prove business benefits.
Instill a digital mindset and conduct change management: It isn’t just about the tools and technology when it comes to having a profitable IoT transformation program; it’s also about the individuals. Building a performance-based culture that efficiently provides and accepts technological services requires a digital mentality. To develop responsibility and enable communication skills, this digital mentality must be embraced at all levels of the organization. Digital working techniques for shop floor personnel must be adopted to enhance the usefulness of IoT devices while allowing workers to focus on more value-added activities. The company will be able to determine where training is needed by conducting a current-state shop floor team capacity evaluation. A training road map or strategy that visualizes activities about how to use the latest tech should be developed.
Scale and sustain: A digitalization will fail if it is not maintained. The huge deployment of IoT solutions will have an impact on all departments, particularly finance, human resources, sales, and research and development. It’s critical to collaborate with these departments to ensure that everyone is on board with the digital transformation and that all connection touchpoints are explored.
Maintaining the architecture of the system, monitoring application accessibility, documenting business impact, and following application life cycle management protocols are all resources required to scale best practices and sustain a digital transformation. Expanding and swiftly implementing IoT abilities throughout industrial and supply chain processes will have a direct influence on the CoE and IoT program’s return on investment (ROI).
Taking the first step toward the giant leap
Companies must act now or risk spending years trying to catch up later. Businesses must begin assessing which sections of their distribution chain are best suited for IoT adoption to better grasp the opportunities that come with it. That initial step can be provided by a concrete strategy that fits into the firm’s broader strategy and generates buy-in from partners.
Experiments will be necessary for success. Establishing realistic expectations from the start, encouraging frequent communication among users and developers, and offering competent instruction will help build the trust necessary to realize the goal of a smart, integrated futuristic distribution chain.
IoT can help the distribution network react to shifts in market patterns and handle unexpected disruptive forces like COVID-19 if everything is done right.
About Metropharm
With the innovation acquired machinery, smart stockrooms, creative ideas, fully compliant manufacturing units, range of transport vehicles, talented management teams, verified vendors, dealers, and suppliers, We are not just stone-touching the idea of doing it all under 1 label, but triumphing over it to understand the human needs, increase the sales, broaden the range of products and reduce the overall cost of all category goods. Taking benefit of that, we are ready to be the helping hands for other businesses as a third-party manufacturer of any category.
We unveil the Treasures full of opportunities to collaborate internally by welcoming all the international brands to come, partner up, and work with us in one of the world’s largest democracies as a part of the “Make in India” campaign. We are a complete set of End to End solutions for brands as their distributors to work with feasibility in the foreign countries as the home ground. Alongside this, we help small traders and start-up brands source globally. You can count on us to work with you in any country around the world and cross-border trades as well.
One would think that due to the name of the company “Metropharm” it would suggest that we are into pharmaceuticals business only, right? However, we as a company are a one-stop-shop for Pharmaceuticals Drugs, R&D of Pharmaceutical formulations, Health and personal care, Oral and dental care, FMCG, Beauty and wellness, Private/White label products, pet care, Household, nutraceuticals, and organic products. Not limiting ourselves to a particular genre, we are keen to add more and more products to our portfolio.
