Supply chain visibility is biggest concern of pharma companies

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"The greatest concern today in supply chain within the pharmaceutical industry is the lack of visibility across the transportation chain especially for air shipments," says Thomas Lobo, director global external supply Asia-India region, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals. 

He continues, "Though there is the availability of track-and-trace technology to enable the industry to gain better control over the supply chain, however, high cost, difficulty of implementation, lack of industry standards and uniform regulatory guidelines pose hurdles in implementing such technology. In today's scenario, where the Indian pharmaceutical industry is in the middle of unprecedented growth, these challenges are impediments to its growth."

Jigish Chiniwala, director, Condot Systems, adds, "Anti-counterfeiting is a big issue not only in international markets but also in India. To make anti-counterfeiting more effective, the industry needs to purchase UID numbers from the government and display them on primary, secondary and tertiary packaging with human readable characters and that can be verified by any telephone operator."

Both Thomas and Jigish will be sharing their views at the Pharma Supply Chain Management conference taking place from Oct. 17-19, 2012, at The Westin Mumbai Garden City, India.

More than 200 industry experts will be gathering including leading companies such as Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, Ranbaxy, Biocon, Dr. Reddy's, Pfizer, Roche Diagnostics, Novartis Pharma, Jubilant Life Sciences, Zydus Cadila and Watson Pharmaceuticals.

Sponsors include Zebra Technologies, Sproxil, PharmaSecure, Condot Systems, Cargo Service Centre and MIBS.
Issues being addressed at the conference include regulatory landscape, role of supply chain professional, quality and security of supply chain, counterfeiting and bar coding, partnership opportunities, cold chain management, managing airport logistics and replenishment issues.

Ryan Viegas, vp, supply chain and procurement, Watson Pharma, who has been attending the conference for the past two years, says, "The Pharma Supply Chain event is an annual event valued by pharma professionals."

In addition to networking with industry peers, the event provides opportunities to benchmark supply chain and logistics best practices as well as keep updated on recent developments in India and the region.

Source: UBM India Pvt. Ltd.

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