Enhancing supply chain visibility in a pharmaceutical supply chain

Abstract

Purpose This work analyzes a pharmaceutical supply chain (PSC) in terms of supply chain visibility (SCV). The current good distribution practice (GDP) guideline demands increased visibility from firms. The purpose of this paper is to propose a solution for SCV enhancements based on automatic identification (Auto-ID) technologies. Design/methodology/approach The authors qualitatively analyze data from ten case studies of actors in a PSC. A review of Auto-ID technologies supports the derivation of solutions to enhance SCV. Findings This work shows that the functionalities of Auto-ID technologies offered by current practical monitoring solutions and challenges created by the GDP guideline necessitate further SCV enhancements. To enhance SCV, the authors propose three solutions: securPharm with passive radio frequency identification tags, transport containers with sensor nodes, and an SCV dashboard. Research limitations/implications This study is limited to a PSC in Germany and is therefore not intended to be exhaustive. Thus, the results serve as a foundation for further analyses. Practical implications This study provides an overview of the functionality of Auto-ID technologies. In juxtaposition with the influence of the GDP guideline, the use of our Auto-ID-based solutions can help to enhance SCV. Originality/value This work analyzes a PSC in Germany, with consideration given to the influence of current legislation. Based on a multiple-case-study design, the authors derive three Auto-ID-based solutions for enhancing SCV.

Internet of things and supply chain management: a literature review

“…Publications reporting IoT applications in various areas include pharmaceutical supply chain (Datta 2016;Papert, Rimpler, and Pflaum 2016), retail industry (Vlachos 2014;Shin and Eksioglu 2015;Thiesse and Buckel 2015;Nowodzinski, Łukasik, and Puto 2016;Balaji and Roy 2017), construction industry ( Shin et al 2011;Demiralp, Guven, and Ergen 2012;Dave et al 2016;Zhong et al 2017) and petrochemical industry (Li (2016)), among other applications.…”

Supply chain finance: Historical foundations, current research, future developments

“…IoT is defined as the use of distributed sensors to gather real time information on goods' position, status and condition and to share it on the Internet (Parry et al, 2016, Papert et al, 2016. Having real-time visibility on goods in the supply chain enables advanced SCF solutions, such as inventory finance and purchase order finance.…”

Blockchain Network Model to Improve Supply Chain Visibility based on Smart Contract

“…Reviewing the existing models that have been proposed to increase the supply chain visibility in Table 1 shows that recent models tend to utilize new emerging technologies such as FRID tags in [49], Cloud computing in [6], and Blockchain technology for the poor visibility issue supply chain in [14,16,30,[45][46][47][48]. However, these models suffer from technological limitations in the technology adoption.…”