Limited Visibility Driving High Inventory Levels

AstraZeneca is a global biopharmaceutical company committed to delivering innovative medicines that improve patients’ lives, while maintaining high service levels across a complex global supply chain.

To support these service levels, AstraZeneca maintained significant inventory across its network. This increased working capital requirements and reinforced the need for greater end-to-end visibility.

Selecting a Partner for End-to-End Planning Transformation

AstraZeneca set out to redefine its global planning capabilities. The biopharmaceutical giant selected supply chain planning software provider OMP as its partner to help realize its refreshed goals. OMP’s platform, Unison Planning, and its planning approach aligned with AstraZeneca’s ambition to build a more transparent and responsive planning environment. The decision was based not only on technology, but also on OMP’s ability to support a broader transformation across processes, decision-making, and ways of working.

Moving to Constraint-Based, Reality-Driven Planning

The two companies began by designing a planning approach that translated AstraZeneca’s business processes, decision frameworks, and organizational realities into a practical, optimized setup. The focus was on ensuring the model reflected how planners actually work and how they make decisions.

“We focused on global planning transformation as a concept, ensuring that we looked at people, process and how we wanted the organization to meet the needs of our patients in the future. So, we spent about six months doing a thorough design with OMP and implementing constraint-based planning,” said AstraZeneca’s Mark Trainor, senior director of global planning, transformation and technology.

With OMP's support, AstraZeneca implemented constraint-based planning, fundamentally changing how it balances supply and demand. “With a constraint-based plan, we have visibility into capacity. We understand the materials available to manufacture the product, and we have greater transparency to assess customer needs and meet expected service levels,” said Trainor.

With improved visibility into capacity and material constraints, AstraZeneca can now create plans that reflect real-world limitations. This shift enabled planners to understand constraints earlier, reducing the need to rely on excess inventory as a buffer against uncertainty. Planners could see where constraints exist, how they affect production and service, and where intervention will have the greatest impact.

OMP remained closely involved throughout the process, helping planners to not only adopt the system, but also use it effectively. “I believe that's been a critical success factor, working side by side from the beginning through implementation and beyond,” said OMP’s Jasper Wouters, global industry lead for life sciences.

Faster Decisions with Greater Confidence and Control

The system now highlights where attention is needed most, allowing AstraZeneca to focus effort where it has the greatest impact. Routine planning decisions are now automated, allowing planners to focus on exceptions and decisions that directly impact service, cost, and risk.

With better data and insights, AstraZeneca has improved both the speed and quality of decision-making, strengthening its ability to consistently meet customer and patient expectations.

From OMP’s perspective, AstraZeneca stands out as a co-innovation partner. Rather than simply leveraging existing platform capabilities, AstraZeneca actively engaged in redefining and shaping the next generation of planning functionality.

The collaboration has remained grounded in operational needs, ensuring improvements are practical and directly applicable.

Scaling Planning With AI-Enabled Decision Support

As the partnership evolved, AstraZeneca and OMP began extending the planning model with AI-enabled decision support by making AstraZeneca part of OMP’s UnisonIQ pilot program.

Recently, AstraZeneca and OMP launched initiatives focused on AI agents and the evolving role of the planner. These capabilities provide context, recommendations, and automation, helping planners evaluate scenarios faster and respond more effectively to change. Rather than replacing human expertise, they enhance it by freeing planners to focus on strategic and exception-based decisions. 

This work builds on OMP’s broader platform evolution within Unison Planning, integrating planning functions from network design through operational scheduling in a single environment.

For AstraZeneca, this evolution is directly tied to the company’s ambitious growth strategy. “We need to be able to focus on bringing those new medicines to market and make the rest of the business run predictably. And that's where automation and AI agents can really support us,” said AstraZeneca’s Trainor.

Co-Innovation Driving Continuous Improvement 

The strength of the AstraZeneca-OMP partnership was formally recognized through an innovation award presented by OMP.

For AstraZeneca, the recognition reflects the importance of close collaboration and a shared commitment to continuous improvement. It underscores not only the successful implementation of new solutions, but also the willingness to challenge assumptions, extend existing capabilities, and co-create future ones.

For OMP, the award represented an opportunity to acknowledge a customer who actively pushes the platform forward and engages as a true partner . The day-to-day collaboration, combined with forward-looking co-creation, reflects the type of partnership both organizations aim to build.

The AstraZeneca transformation shows how aligning technology, processes, and people can improve supply chain visibility, decision quality, and operational resilience, while positioning the organization for continued progress with AI.

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