Cipla’s journey to driverless forecasting

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the November 2017 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

November 2017

There are strands of sustainability and corporate responsibility through much of this month’s issue. James T. Prokopanko, the former CEO and president of The Mosaic Company, details how corporate responsibility became his compass for leader ship when he took over the reins of the company back in 2007. Similarly, Joseph Ludorf, the executive director of supply chain for Cipla Medpro, details how revamping the planning process enables the South African pharmaceutical company to prof- itably supply drugs to underserved populations on the continent as part of its corporate mission. We round out the issue with five tips for intelli- gent risk taking in…

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In the business of supplying life-saving medicines, nothing matters more than getting the right items to the right places on schedule. When that doesn’t happen, poor forecasting and stock-outs are often the crux of the problem.

But the pharmaceutical supply chain is a little more complicated than managing just those planning variables at Cipla Medpro South Africa, where I am the director of supply chain operations.

We are constantly confronted with product limitations ranging from temperature control requirements to expiration dates. Both create their own supply chain challenges in Africa. And then there are the seemingly endless regulations from international and local agencies. These include standards from the World Health Organization and the South African Medicines Control Council, not to mention many local pharmaceutical and manufacturing standards.

We also have to factor in very long lead times for imported products and demand spikes from government contract tenders. And on the delivery side, we are faced with immense logistical difficulties that range from unpaved roads to armed bandits.

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