Mark Trainor, senior director of global transformation and technology with AstraZeneca, tells how the pharmaceutical giant transformed its planning function to gain a new level of control and visibility over its supply chain.

AstraZeneca, a global biopharmaceutical business, had an excessive amount of working capital tied up in inventory. “We didn’t have good visibility into our supply chain and didn’t understand material risk,” says Trainor. “We were looking at unconstrained demand and supply.”

AstraZeneca turned to the planning software of OMP to help it develop a constraint-based plan, which would allow it for the first time to fully understand the capacity and materials within its supply chain. Jasper Waters, global industry lead for life sciences with OMP, adds that the engagement allowed the customer to finally adopt “a reality-based planning model.”

Implementation and adoption has been a three-year journey to date, says Trainor, as AstraZeneca has acquired an “understanding of what we wanted our future organization to be.” The company spent approximately six months undertaking a thorough design and implementation path for achieving constraint-based planning — “a big leap for us.”

Now, says Trainor, human planners are far more efficient, focusing only on exceptions while the system handles the routine tasks that used to take up most of their time.

Waters says the two companies functioned as “co-innovation partners,” working closely together to map the necessary steps forward. In the process, OMP bestowed upon AstraZeneca a customer innovation award, “a testament to two tremendous teams working side by side,” Waters says, adding that “we want to recognize the customers who push us to go the extra mile.”

Sponsored by OMP, a leader in AI-powered supply chain planning. Want to learn more? Visit omp.com.