Time for supply chain professionals to reset the expectations
Vickram Srivastava, Head of Planning - Global Supply Chain, Sun Pharma, told supply chain professionals, "It's time for us to tell businesses that disruptions are here to stay. This is the new world in which we are going to live. So reset your expectations on inventory, lead time and delivery. It is very important that we take the limelight," during the recently concluded Air Cargo India in Mumbai.
He talks about the evolution of Indian pharmaceutical logistics, technology disruptions coming in, which he believes will help pharma companies to offer affordable medicines to patients across the world, a future that he is expecting and his message to supply chain professionals.
"Before we become big, we need to become better," he said while noting down his takeaways and learnings from the pandemic. "We need to be looking at how to make our businesses and supply chain more sustainable so that we can have business continuity."
Second, how we are going to do scenario planning. Looking at different options to have business continuity, Third, how we are going to invest in the right talent and make them future ready. Fourth, digitisation will be the cornerstone for what we are planning and how everything will be connected like a circle through a thread of digitalisation," he added.
He spoke in detail about the transformation brought in by the Covid-19 pandemic and otherwise which includes the change in relationships between shippers and other stakeholders from being business partners to collaborators or application of technology across upstream and downstream of the supply chains into demand sensing or providing visibility.
"For me, the most critical thing in the modern-day pharma supply chain is how we find and develop the right people or right talent who can support this transformation and embrace new technology. However, unlike many would, I don't believe that technology will replace people or make them redundant. Technology is to make us more efficient," he said.
