Today’s pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device companies are facing complexity based on new regulations, expirations and more. At Cognizant, a multinational digital consultant, these challenges impact life sciences clients in every region as they try to create global end-to-end supply chains, says Ramji Mani, the company's assistant vice president of supply chain.

“For every region, you have different regulations, different compliances, different rules and different packaging … and expiration also makes a huge impact on [supply chain],” Mani said in an interview at Kinexions, the annual event for Kinaxis customers and partners.

And unlike some other verticals, these companies must be able to do complete track-and-trace — right to the end patient.

To create order in the chaos, designing a global supply chain requires three things, he says.

1. The company needs an executive sponsor — “someone who actually says, hey, we need to get this thing done.”

2. You should have consensus-driven supply chain models. Cognizant uses Kinaxis RapidResponse software as a modeling tool to develop consensus across various regions on how to drive an S&OP process or supply-demand process.

3. You must get the packaging right. (Multiple languages make a lot of difference, too.)

“The complexity is huge, but consensus is a way to drive it,” Mani says. “One way we’ve been very successful in lots of life sciences companies is to design a global template, and then call out the nuances for each region separately — and then try to cater to needs of those business units.”

See video for full interview