The future of the pharmaceutical industry.
The future of the pharmaceutical industry
ptel Group is a leading global supplier of traceability, track-andtrace and vision systems for a growing number of industries, including pharmaceutical, food and beverages, and metal and mineral mining. Florent Bouguin, Chief Technology Officer at Optel Group, explains, “We have been in business for almost 35 years now. What we are doing is digitalising the entire supply chain from end to end, powered by traceability. We started inside the manufacturing plants, and then we went upstream and downstream the supply chain.”
Upstream refers to the raw materials, the active pharmaceutical ingredients, and all the suppliers that are part of the procurement of a product, whilst downstream comprises the warehouses, retailers, contract manufacturing organisations, distribution centres, and hospitals, for instance. Florent says, “Across all nodes of the supply chain, Optel Group is capturing the data, and we value this data. Our unique value proposition is bringing visibility on what is happening in the supply chain and helping businesses to make the best decision.”
Florent Bouguin, Chief Technology Officer at Optel Group, charts his company’s success story in digitising the entire supply chain from end to end.2
BUSINESS INTERVIEW
Sustainability
Optchain
Performance Compliance
“The third axis is compliance. With all the data that we are capturing, we are able to help our clients to respect pharmaceutical safety standards. And with the push on sustainability, more and more companies are now using our traceability platform to comply with local and international regulations.”
Florent highlights three axis of value; sustainability, performance, and compliance. He continues, “In terms of sustainability, we provide the tracking of the unique carbon footprint of a product across its entire lifecycle, empowering our client to have a more responsible supply chain, meet their energy targets, promote the circular economy, and reduce the plastic content of their packaging.
“As far as performance is concerned, our starting point was to help our clients to secure on-time delivery, have visibility on their inventories across the entire supply chain, and measure the quality of their product, thus reducing recalls. In a nutshell, that value works towards improving the profitability of the business.
Florent says forming connections with external partners plays a key role in Optel Group’s business strategy. He continues, “It is all about collaboration and creating the network. To do that, you need to partner with other companies. We have technology partnerships to enable us to connect to all the different enterprise systems and warehouse management systems. We also need to collaborate with distribution and logistics partners, as well as the contract manufacturing organisations. Silos, such as the hospitals, contract manufacturing organisations and logistics partners, are present in the supply chain. With collaboration, we do not see them as silos anymore, but we are linking them together. This is the future of traceability for the pharmaceutical industry.”
Optchain is the intelligent supply chain solution suite, powered by Optel Group’s traceability technology. In
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short, it is the control tower that the company is putting onto the market. Florent explains, “For all of the axis, we provide different solutions, and you need a control tower to see what is happening. When you open Optchain, you have access to all these solutions, giving the visibility on your supply chain. And to feed Optchain, we need various data capture. We have a strong stack of technologies to bring that data to Optchain, whilst it also has the capacity to connect to competitors, collaborators, and
governmental bodies, because to see, you need to collaborate.”
According to Florent, the pharmaceutical industry is not as advanced as it could be when it comes to digitalisation. He says, “Pharma is not the leading market segment for the digitalisation of the supply chain due to the silos. Given the sensitivity of the data, it is an industry that does not see the value in collaboration. You do not have one big player at the top to push digital transformation, but a number of big players, so perhaps only governments enforcing regulations can drive collaboration.”
“For all of the axis, we provide different solutions, and you need a control tower to see what is happening. When you open Optchain, you have access to all these solutions, giving the visibility on your supply chain”
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Another pain point of the pharmaceutical sector for Florent is in the last-mile deliveries. He elaborates, “You can have full visibility along the supply chain until you reach the hospital. When you go from the warehouse of the hospital to the distribution of the medicine to the patient, it then becomes a nightmare. The medicine might have to travel between four floors in the hospital and 10 different nurses, and you lose all visibility. When it comes to on-time delivery, everything is lost in the last mile, and the cold chain is not respected, so the integrity of the product is compromised. Having the right product, at the right time, in the right location, is the difficulty of the pharmaceutical supply chain.”
First Expired, First Out (FEFO) is a new concept used in field inventory management to describe a way of dealing with products that have a limited shelf life, such as medicines. Florent adds, “Warehouses, especially those in hospitals, are not geared towards FEFO. When we developed our solution for the distribution of the Covid vaccine a few years ago, the cold chain was a huge challenge. You do not have room for mistakes, but there are many ways in which it can go wrong. The supply chain is becoming more complex based on time sensitivity and the cold chain, so this is where digitalisation comes in. If you do not have the digital tool, you will not have visibility, and you need visibility in order to have traceability.”
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According to Florent, traceability is essential for giving you the accuracy, precision and trust you need in the data, processes and methodologies. He adds, “Traceability ticks all these boxes. It is the right tool for helping in this journey because I don’t think any other technology does everything we want.”
Besides technology, Florent believes a change in behaviour is part of the answer to tackling the problem of last-mile pharmaceutical deliveries. He says, “A change in people’s approach and in their working practices will help towards streamlining the last mile of the pharmaceutical supply chain. Trust is a big part of this. If the technology is working well, you will win the trust of the participants, helping to onboard them. Another barrier is the cost of ownership of any new type of technology. It needs to be reduced in order to generate more interest.”
Optel Group’s roadmap for the future is focused on personalised medicine and cell gene therapy. Florent explains, “Cell gene therapy is big news for pharmaceutical manufacturers because it needs investment and is the future of their business. With the big data we are collecting, we are running AI tools to help the supply chain to be more efficient. When they started their digitalisation journey, all our clients installed track-and-trace to be compliant. They now have all this data, which can be used to find the value. The hard work has been
done! We are therefore working with our clients to show them how they can better manage their inventories.”
The last advancement that Florent is working on is in accelerating the transformation of the pharmaceutical industry to be more sustainable. He concludes, “Pharma is a huge polluter of our planet, generating copious greenhouse gas emissions and wasting water. The problem is that pharma previously did not have a sustainability agenda. Times are changing, but not fast enough. I am focused on pushing our clients hard to change. I want to prove to the market that it is possible, as it is working in other markets. If you improve your sustainability and source more responsible packaging, you will make cost savings. This is the other big technology push we are putting onto the market.”
For further information on Optel Group, visit www.optelgroup.com
“Times are changing, but not fast enough. I am focused on pushing our clients hard to change.
I want to prove to the market that it is possible, as it is working in other markets”
Florent Bouguin, CTO
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www.optelgroup.com
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