A decision support framework and system for design of sustainable pharmaceutical supply chain network

Abstract

With the issues of climate change continuously taking center stage, there is thus a pressing need for the pharmaceutical companies to assess the sustainability of their supply chains. However, the highly regulated nature of the industry has prompted various supply chain decisions such as material sourcing, siting of plants, and distribution network configuration to be locked into the registration of the new drug. This could consequently lead to inefficient supply chain operation during the drug commercial stage, yielding high greenhouse gas emissions per unit of drug product. Previously, we have proposed a systematic framework for design of a sustainable commercial-stage pharmaceutical supply chain network that can be driven from the early drug development stages. In this paper, we extend the framework by incorporating more functionalities. We also introduce a novel decision support system, called PharmaSC, which implements the framework. PharmaSC system has been developed by integrating two computer tools—an Excel-based analytic hierarchy process and LLamasoft’s Supply Chain Guru—into one coherent framework for selecting the most suitable suppliers and manufacturers, mapping a supply chain superstructure network, and optimizing the network to identify and resolve trade-offs between economic and environmental factor. To illustrate the system, an industrially motivated case study involving a paclitaxel production is solved.

Graphical abstract