Catalent’s New Normal: How COVID-19 impacted the Supply Chain

Back

Featured Expert: Melissa Buchanan, Director, Supply Chain, Catalent Biologics

 The pandemic has touched almost every aspect of our lives, and the pharmaceutical industry had to adapt quickly to continue to supply important medicines. Supply chains have come under intense pressure, and companies of all kinds have had to adapt to this “new normal” to avoid delays.

As a global development and manufacturing partner that supplies medicines, clinical trial materials, and health products to millions of patients and consumers, Catalent needed to balance the continued work on thousands of products while also supporting the scale up of COVID-19 vaccines and therapies for over 60 customers from small/virtual biotechs to mid- and large pharma. During this Q&A, Catalent’s supply chain director, Melissa Buchanan, discusses the challenges they faced and solutions they implemented to overcome this daunting hurdle.

Q: How did COVID-19 impact the supply chain?

Buchanan: It goes without saying that the pandemic is unprecedented, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the pharmaceutical industry. Never before have we faced rolling shortages of critical production materials from so many supply sources. Even when supply appeared to stabilize, vendors were rocked by employee and raw material shortages. This resulted in ripple effects throughout the supply chain as the procurement of diverse critical supplies, from glass and amino acids to disposable consumables, became challenging. It became critical to understand not only our own supply sources, but also those of our suppliers.

Q: As the ways of working in a pandemic world have stabilized, what activities that were new at the beginning have now become standard operating procedures?

Buchanan: Many of the communication channels established at the beginning of the pandemic have become our new normal. Escalation channels are also now better defined, and the levers that are available to address specific material or supply chain issues are more broadly understood. We established new ways that stakeholders could align and increased the frequency of these touchpoints with standing agendas focused on ensuring that operations were optimized.

Q: Have your supplier relationships stabilized or changed dramatically?

Buchanan: Some of our suppliers have grown and adapted at a similar pace as Catalent. For example, we had many situations with our glass suppliers where unprecedented efforts were made to move material around the globe to ensure uninterrupted production of medicines and vaccines. These suppliers, although sometimes constrained, helped us create, design, source and even deliver new solutions for our customers. For critical packaging materials, Catalent partnered with vendors to sequence production in smaller batches, resulting in a truly just-in-time delivery pattern to support all programmed production–rather than slowing or stopping the process as we waited for larger processing runs to be completed and transported.

Q: Do you think capacity and raw material constraints will continue over the next few years? What can the industry do to address them?

Buchanan: With global supply chains, the industry will likely continue to feel the pandemic’s effects for several years to come. One way we can combat this is to increase our planning horizon, since a longer view allows for better risk mitigation. At Catalent, we continue to refine our long-range planning models to forecast production capacity needs, raw material forecasts, and storage requirements. It’s critical to discuss these projects both with our customers and suppliers if the industry is to continue to grow at such a rapid pace.

Q: How is Catalent thinking about risk mitigation of its supplier network?

Buchanan: Catalent routinely evaluates supply risks and develops mitigation strategies to ensure delivery to our customers, and ultimately to patients. Creativity is key as we look to mitigate risk across our supply networks. Solutions may include vendor management inventory, dual sourcing, re-usable (versus disposable) materials, and vertical integration.

 There is also an opportunity to re-examine long standing production platforms in the industry; for example, use of stainless steel versus disposable options, or simplifying and optimizing process steps or even complex final packaging operations. Each area of production is being re-examined through the lens of supply chain security.

We also look to collaborate with our customers to find realistic solutions that may better fit their needs. For example, small biotechs may not have the resources to source their own supplies, so they are more reliant on Catalent’s experience and relationships. 

 At the end of the day, we will continue to work with our customers and suppliers to ensure that we are doing our best to supply COVID and non-COVID vaccines and therapies as quickly as possible.