“The greatest concern today in supply chain within the pharmaceutical industry is the lack of visibility across the transportation chain especially for air shipments,” said Thomas Lobo, director, global external supply–Asia-India Region, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals.
“Though there is the availability of track and trace technology to enable the industry to gain better control over the supply chain, however, high cost, difficulty of implementation, lack of industry standards, and uniform regulatory guidelines pose hurdles in implementing such technology,” he said. “In today’s scenario, where the Indian pharmaceutical industry is in the middle of unprecedented growth, these challenges are impediments to its growth.”
Jigish Chiniwala, director, Condot Systems, said, “Anti-counterfeiting is a big issue not only in international markets, but also in India. To make anti-counterfeiting more effective, the industry needs to purchase UID numbers from the government and display them on primary, secondary, and tertiary packaging with human-readable characters and that can be verified by any telephone operator.”
Both Lobo and Chiniwala will be sharing their views at the Pharma Supply Chain Management conference, set for October 17-19 at The Westin Mumbai Garden City in India.
More than 200 industry experts will be gathering including companies such as Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, Ranbaxy, Biocon, Dr Reddy’s, Pfizer, Roche Diagnostics, Novartis Pharma, Jubilant Life Sciences, Zydus Cadila, and Watson Pharmaceuticals.
Issues being addressed at the conference include regulatory landscape, role of supply chain professional, quality and security of supply chain, counterfeiting and bar-coding, partnership opportunities, cold chain management, managing airport logistics, and replenishment issues.
Besides networking with industry peers, the event provides opportunities to benchmark supply chain and logistics best practices as well as keep updated on recent developments in India and the region.
Visit www.pharmasupplychainindia.com/pr for more information.
