Training and technology implementation top survey list of supply chain managers' focus

Although it is not specific to pharma cold chain, let alone life sciences, the annual Tompkins global survey reveals overall trends among the members of its Supply Chain Consortium. The Raleigh, NC, consulting firm, which includes GSK, BMS, Merck and Pfizer among its life sciences clients, finds respondents’ initiatives to reduce costs and improve shipping performance are evenly split between staff training and technology implementations, with 73.9% of respondents engaged in both of those activities.

Other results:

• 62% of respondents use brokers to calculate import duties, while 30% perform that function internally
• Two-thirds of respondents are able to calculate landed cost accurately (in their own opinion); where landed-cost calculations go astray, the most common reason is misclassification, followed by errors in supplier/vendor terms.
• 61.8% of respondents say that there is no duplication between their internal supply chain management functions and those of their suppliers and vendors; the remainder saw varying degrees of overlap.

The report summary is available at Tompkins’ website.