The COVID-19 pandemic, geopolitical unrest, and military action across the world have fundamentally disrupted the assumption and practice of a globally interconnected supply chain, cutting off cities and international supply hubs, and straining raw material supplies and stocks. These global events continue to put pressure on an inbound supply chain model that has its roots in ‘just-in-time’ lean manufacturing practices.

The future of the inbound supply chain: implementing electronic data exchange (EDE) 2.16 MB 123 downloads

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A range of measures will be needed to ease this pressure, but one of the key ways is to use electronic data exchange (EDE). This is why BioPhorum has been targeting this area to demystify EDE, set out its importance for supply chain effectiveness, capture its value and benefits, help people understand the practical enablers and maturity path, and lay out a future path of development.

Supply chain innovation is essential for future business success and deep collaboration along the supply chain will enable that innovation. To explain why EDE is a cornerstone of this collaboration and innovation, BioPhorum has published The future of the inbound supply chain: implementing electronic data exchange

The paper is aimed at those in senior sponsor or executive team positions in biomanufacturer and supplier companies who are contemplating or at the start of improving digital communication across partnerships. It can also be used by internal supplier and biomanufacturing teams seeking to improve digital communication.

It also discusses the overall goal for EDE in the inbound supply chain – assurance of high quality and consistent raw material supply through easy access to data.

Explaining the importance of EDE, Catherine Zune, Product Process Director at GSK, said,

“We aim to use EDE to understand the role of raw materials in its vaccine manufacturing process. The goal is to create the infrastructure to exchange data with critical raw material suppliers, which would be merged with process data and then used for data analytics. Another important step is to monitor the raw material performance to control manufacturing process performance/variability and prediction.”

EDE is fundamental to the evolution, future development, efficiency, and resilience of the inbound supply chain, and data is critical to driving further industry progress. Leveraging EDE is imperative to many industry initiatives to manage increasingly complex supply chains, including digital programs (such as big data), increased agility between suppliers and biomanufacturers, and business goals (e.g., increased efficiency). There are many realized and anticipated benefits of EDE and BioPhorum is focusing on the critical enablers to progress biopharma digital maturity for raw material data.

BioPhorum Supply Partner has identified end-to-end digitization as one of its five strategic objectives for the inbound supply strategy, which is part of its Strategic Framework for the Development of the Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing Industry In-Bound Supply Chain.