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Pharma companies should improve their production flexibility to serve better during the pandemic.
Most of the pharma manufacturing companies in India have the goal of saving people’s lives, which is the right approach. While they are trying hard to save as many lives as possible in the current pandemic, a few changes in their internal working would help them further in this regard. One of the major obstacles coming in the way is the inflexibility in their production planning and scheduling process.
We understand that pharma manufacturing has to deal with several additional regulatory approvals and stringent guidelines as compared to FMCG sector. Our initial analysis indicates that they normally freeze their production plan for the next 1 to 3 months. When the demand for a particular drug went up several fold in February-March, they had to scramble hard and expedite to arrange for an early production run.
It is much better to build the capability of production flexibility, so that products witnessing abnormally high demand get scheduled early as a part of their regular planning process itself.