Pharma 2020: Supplying the future - Which path will you take?

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The pharmaceutical industry is experiencing major upheavals and many companies have responded by trying to discover, develop and market medicines more efficiently, but they’ve invested relatively little effort in reconfiguring their manufacturing and distribution operations to date. In short, the pharmaceutical supply chain needs a radical overhaul, and we predict that it will undergo significant key changes over the next decade.

In this paper we have identified four potential supply chain options from which pharma companies can choose. Those that focus on specialist medicines can either delegate all their manufacturing and distribution to trusted contractors or build service oriented supply chains to enhance their brands. Those that focus on mass-market medicines can either become low-cost providers or build supply chains that generate a profit by servicing both internal and external customers.

In this report, we discuss the main trends dictating the need for a new approach to the manufacturing and distribution of medicines, together with some of the techniques and technologies that will help the industry make the necessary changes, in more detail in the following pages. We also look at the key characteristics of each of the four routes we’ve identified, and the implications they carry.