LogiPharma US 2024 key takeaways: the triple bottom line of pharma supply chain visibility

Watch Gísli Herjólfsson’s keynote presentation in full here

On the expo floor, face-to-face conversations at our booth echoed these key concerns, with a view to collaborating, sharing expertise, and encouraging continuous innovation in pharma logistics. For the Controlant team, this is what LogiPharma events are all about: face-to-face interactions that strengthen our partnerships with customers and inspire us as we develop new solutions to advance the industry.

Gísli Herjólfsson, CEO and co-founder of Controlant, was a keynote speaker this year, and he presented a story of the role of technology in future-proofing the supply chain in a way that has a positive impact on patient, planet, and profit.

Why address the triple bottom line?

In pharma, when it comes to thinking about improving the bottom line for patients, we need to consider factors such as health outcomes, the accessibility of medicines, the safety and efficacy of treatments.

Pharma supply chain technology that impacts patients includes machine learning technologies such as AI, blockchain that helps keep patients safe by identifying cases of counterfeit products, and IoT-enabled visibility that has been a game changer for ensuring product safety and supply availability.

When it comes to the planet, the bottom line is straightforward: as Herjólfsson says in his presentation, “There is no planet B.” This is the driving motivation behind sustainable technology for the pharma supply chain. For example, to reduce electronic waste through recycling and a circular business model; to save natural resources and reduce emissions by using non-lithium batteries; and to avoid wasting products by using better monitoring technology.

It's easy to see the importance of people and planet, and ROI (return of an investment) is a necessary third pillar in this. It needs to be in the best interest of businesses to keep the wheels of innovation turning in a healthy competitive landscape.

Early adopter or safe player?

Pharma is already using technology to impact the triple bottom line through efficiency, automation, and scale. But if Star Trek was about boldly going where no man has gone before, pharma tends to go the other way: going only where someone else has already proven it’s safe and effective to go! With new technology, it’s a balance between forging ahead as an early adopter, and learning from others to ensure we take a safe route. When it comes to advances in pharma supply chain technology, being among the first can be a factor in long-term profitability, and competition gives us that extra push to come up with the cleverest application of a new technology.

How to future-proof on every front – and save $35 billion!

We future proof by covering all these bases, understanding the trends, looking ahead to how the needs of patients, planet and profit will evolve, and then recognizing the smartest path to the future reality. The triple negative impact of not using these technologies is evident in medicine stockouts, product waste, and the current price tag of $35 billion per year on supply chain failures.

In his presentation, Herjólfsson provides some examples of the successful adoption of new technology in the pharma industry, where actual use cases show how supply chain technology is having an impact on the triple bottom line.

Watch the presentation to learn about Controlant’s role in the massive task of delivering Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines in a record-breaking time at a global scale – a project defined by “embracing the impossible”. In another example, he outlines how Roche worked with Controlant to bring a two-week process down to less than an hour.

Supply Chain Soft Spots

Herjólfsson’s third example involves a new application that enables pharma companies to automatically map excursions and match locations of deviations to hotpots at specific sites, to automatically calculate and adjust routes or move shipments based on that data.

Doing this automatically and in real time across all shipments means you can compare the performance of airports and harbors, identify performance improvement opportunities to lower excursion rates, optimize distribution based on lane performance, identify potential root causes through patterns across shipment temperature profiles, transportation modes, and different packaging solutions, and so on.

This is one of the applications Controlant has recently launched, called Supply Chain Soft Spots. This is a valuable capability now and will only become more significant in future and at greater scale – to reduce product loss, ensure data-driven decision making, and enable shifting from active to passive packaging

Start with transformation where it has the greatest impact

All these examples have in common aligned goals, bold decisions, the right technology, and the right people empowered to enable transformation. Also crucial when setting out, is first identifying which steps will ensure the greatest impact now and in the future for the triple bottom line.

A digitally mature end-to-end supply chain is the dream, but you can’t eat an elephant in one bite! There’s a lot to gain – for people, planet and profit – if we tackle the supply chain link by link.

When looking at what supply chain pain points you’re facing, homing in on specific pain points and transforming a single process can have enormous impact. For example, if you have a process that’s highly manual yet also highly dependent on data, and is done hundreds of times a day in multiple locations, this is where you’re likely to find enormous value in digital transformation.

It’s time to act

Herjólfsson uses the analogy of turning your headlights on. If you’re driving in the dark, you won’t have full visibility of what’s happening right now, let alone where you’re going or what’s ahead. With your headlights on, you can aim to be at the forefront of these technological opportunities to give patients a healthier future by making treatments safer and more accessible more quickly, to reduce emissions and waste for the planet, and to assure shareholders that you’ve optimized efficiency and automation, that you’re ready for the way medicines and the supply chain will evolve, and that you’ve future-proofed your operations, ready for any scale.