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Survey Reveals Importance of Distribution and Logistics Partnerships

UPS Pain in the (Supply) Chain’s 2015 survey results show progress in product security and adapting to regulatory changes.

The UPS 2015 Pain in the (Supply) Chain survey revealed that healthcare companies made significant strides in just one year to address some top supply chain pain points, as evidenced by the following:

• 75% of respondents reported success addressing product security vs 55% in 2014

• 70% of respondents reported success in addressing regulatory compliance vs 57% in 2014.

“What we find most interesting from this year’s survey results are the strides that healthcare companies have made in just one year to address some top issues that have faced the healthcare supply chain for decades, and we are pleased to share the strategies that firms are leveraging,” said Robin Hooker, UPS Director of Healthcare Marketing.

Despite those gains, issues remain in the healthcare supply chain. For example, the survey showed that only 50% of respondents indicated success addressing supply chain cost management. The top challenge to managing costs is rapid business growth, cited by 56%. In order to address this, healthcare logisticians see the most opportunity in optimizing their transportation costs and gaining better inventory visibility.

DSCSA makes an impact

“We see pharmaceutical companies becoming more optimistic regarding product security as they implement anti-counterfeiting initiatives as part of the U.S. Drug Supply Chain Security Act, which is a broad-based supply chain security and recall mandate," Hooker said. "The real question is how quickly will forward-looking firms reap additional business value related to inventory management by investing in systems that are not only compliant to DSCSA, but leverage the datasets for supply chain optimization."

Hooker added, “The analytics and predictive power of managing inventories and logistics flows with knowledge of potential expiry dates at the unit level enables a new level of inventory control and potential savings in expired pharma return/audit/destruction cost.”

Other key survey findings included the following:

• Physical protection from theft (46%) and poor supply chain visibility and too many supply chain hand-offs (40%) represented the biggest product security challenges

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INTRODUCING! The Latest Trends for Life Sciences at PACK EXPO Southeast