How the Supply Chain Can Get its Resiliency Back

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How the Supply Chain Can Get its Resiliency Back

The pandemic put an unprecedented strain on the supply chain, revealing the need for new technologies and strategies to overcome bottlenecks.

Before 2020, many people would have described the US’ supply chains as resilient. However, the past twelve months added a less desirable set of adjectives to the list, such as brittle, inelastic, fragile, and vulnerable. Shipping delays have dominated headlines since November as more than 2 million parcels were reported still undelivered on Christmas day. The United States Postal Service (USPS), a frequent target of consumer ire, said that it delivered a record number of packages this holiday season amid the pandemic, which significantly impacted its workforce availability.

Exemplifying just how overwhelmed the delivery industry was, one postal service transportation manager in Ohio told the Washington Post that, “UPS and FedEx have shut us off. Nobody can keep up right now, but we don’t have the luxury of turning people down.”

COVID-19 has exposed a glaring lack of agility in supply chains that will sabotage the economic recovery and put lives in danger if left unchecked. A US Senate investigation revealed a 20 percent spike in the use of mail-order prescriptions during the pandemic and that “significant” USPS delays posed “serious health risks to patients.”

A Memphis news outlet reported that investigators uncovered hundreds of complaints from Midsouth veterans who were about to run out of medicine or already out. In many cases, VA pharmacists blamed COVID-19 and severe mailing delays with the postal service.

According to the FDA, border closures, quarantines, and a drastic decline in shipping by sea and air have slowed the delivery of many types of supply and equipment, including some that aren’t directly related to COVID-19 treatment or testing. In August 2020, the FDA reported 118 drug shortages; 55 were related to an increase in demand, 16 to API shortages, and 8 to manufacturing or shipping delays.

While demand for critical care medications (anesthetics) and antidepressants surged, manufacturing site closures and impaired transportation routes immobilized supply chains.

Business intelligence (BI) dashboards have emerged as the go-to tools for solving many business challenges. Historically, data initiatives failed to reach their potential because of the massive number of spreadsheets and reports data scientists must read through and decipher before presenting actionable takeaways. The problem is that new trends emerge without warning, especially in the post-pandemic world. Waiting for data analysts to present their findings doesn’t facilitate the kind of quick problem-solving customers demand, especially when they’re waiting for life-saving medications and other high-priority shipments.

Better Supply Chain Resiliency is Found in The Data Story

Pharma manufacturers, logistics and distribution companies are fortifying their supply chains by augmenting BI dashboards with embedded, no-code AI to accelerate data understanding and informed decision-making. Augmented analytics comprises machine learning and various artificial intelligence technologies such as natural language generation (NLG) to assist with data preparation, insight generation and communications to supplement how people consume information and analytics.

NLG technology not only gives supply chain and logistics companies a better understanding of their data, but it also makes actionable intelligence available more quickly to a broader range of decision-makers, not just the data scientists.

Insights presented in natural language narratives extend data understanding to all lines of business. Embedding NLG technology into BI dashboards augments data visualizations by “narrating” all underlying data. For pharma manufacturers and distributors, data storytelling communicates real-time insights in plain English to distribution and fulfillment managers into daily loads against capacity commitments, for example, exposing areas in which demand consistently outpace the committed capacity.

The democratization of data enables companies to make faster, better-informed decisions and know what’s happening, what may be coming, and what to do next. Cloud-based, self-service analytics also represent an important milestone in AI adoption, with data-driven solutions at the center.

As we saw in the early stages of COVID-19 vaccinations, manufacturers and treatment centers were ill-prepared to manage the flood of people seeking vaccinations. Leadership teams need real-time visibility of operations to align production sites, distribution centers and material flows.

Transparency is the key to accounting for unexpected events that could affect supply and demand and lead to drug shortages. To move quickly from insight to action, pharma supply chains – from manufacturer to distributors and delivery – must have ready-access to the same real-time, actionable intelligence.

Augmented analytics provide the answers to pivot without sacrificing productivity. Such adaptability and flexibility are the cornerstones of agility and supply chain resilience.

According to Bain, Pharma companies that integrate flexibility and redundancy into the entire value chain, and that improve visibility, will be best positioned to predict chain disruptions and respond to them rapidly. Resilient supply chains bolster problem-solving capabilities throughout their organization and at manufacturing sites, empowering local organizations to make decisions that prevent disruptions in business continuity.

Simply put, the sooner they can alert carriers to their need for more capacity, the better they can fill the gap.

Closing Thoughts

Augmented analytics, which combines business intelligence and NLG, empowers supply chains with data-driven, actionable intelligence to prevent manufacturing and shipping delays, which can have life and death implications in today’s world.

According to Gartner, 90% of the world’s top 500 companies will have converged analytics governance into broader data and analytics governance initiatives by 2023. And by 2025, 80% of consumer or industrial products containing electronics will incorporate on-device analytics. Likewise, by 2025, data stories will be the most widespread way of consuming analytics, and 75% of stories will be automatically generated using augmented analytics techniques.

Resilient supply chains will be vital to navigating an increasingly turbulent market over the coming decade.

Supply chain and logistics companies don’t need to collect any more data to achieve better resiliency. They just need a way to more quickly extract, process and communicate the insights from their data so they can respond faster. Augmented analytics can make that goal a reality.

How the Supply Chain Can Get its Resiliency Back
Brian Wallace

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