Properly Preparing for Supply Chain Disruptions

In a video interview with Pharma Commerce, Gaurav Gupta, managing director and head of R&D at Kotter, discusses the regulatory pressures and rising R&D costs impacting the pharmaceutical industry as it looks toward 2025. Gupta highlighted that many regulatory challenges, such as drug pricing pressures from the Inflation Reduction Act, will persist in the coming years. Additionally, he pointed out the growing integration of real-world evidence into clinical trials and the need for regulators to keep pace with emerging technologies like AI. Gupta believes that these trends will continue to shape the industry without major new disruptions expected in the short term.

He also comments on the steps pharmaceutical leaders should take to better prepare their teams and organizations for supply chain disruptions; specific technical and "soft" skills that will be critical for pharmaceutical leaders and frontline employees to thrive in the evolving industry landscape, and how this can help when it comes to proactivity in handling talent shortages.

A transcript of Gupta’s conversation with PC can be found below.

PC: With increasing uncertainty on the horizon, what steps should pharmaceutical leaders take in order to better prepare their teams and organizations for supply chain disruptions?

Gupta: Viewing supply chain primarily through the lens of efficiency and cost reduction has shifted, where there’s a recognition that we've got to be more flexible with supply chain, we've got to be more adaptable. How we're setting up our supply chains is very much being felt. I think you're just spot on that that's an area of focus, and there are a few things for leaders to be thinking about.

One is just getting folks to appreciate that. That's the first step. We've got to think about our supply chain with flexibility in mind. How do we create more flexible supply chains? Because we don't know what the next disruption might be. We do know that there probably will be a disruption, we just don't know exactly what it's going to look like. I think getting closer to the frontline and making sure decisions are happening closer to the frontline, so that you can move faster. You can shift faster when you start to see things changing, whether that's on the policy front or regarding logistic disruptions.

I think the other part is just thinking through scenarios, doing a little bit of scenario planning around the fact that we can't identify all of the disruptions, but we can certainly think through what some of them might be. What happens if you know some of the conversation around tariffs come into play? What does that mean for our supply chain? What happens if we have, disruption in shipping lanes? Thinking through what your responses might be ahead of time, so that you can be more flexible and adaptable, and doing a little bit of that scenario planning ahead of time [is essential]. If those disruptions were come to pass, you kind of have a have an idea of where you want to go.