Securing the Post-Covid Pharma Supply Chain: An Empirical Investigation

The pandemic outbreak of Covid-19 has shown the fragilities and vulnerabilities of the Pharma Supply Chain (PSC), leading academics and practitioners to rethink PSCs’ flexibility, agility, responsiveness, and resilience. This paper investigates how to secure the Post-Covid PSC by (i) classifying the challenges born of or aggravated by the pandemic; (ii) understanding how solutions enabled by Industry 4.0 technologies can be integrated into a framework to address and solve the above challenges. A theoretical framework was developed from a literature review to achieve these objectives, which was then confirmed and enriched by a multiple case study investigation

Auto-ID enabled tracking and tracing data sharing over dynamic B2B and B2G relationships

RFID 2011 collocated with the 2011 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Workshop Series on Millimeter Wave Integration Technologies (IMWS 2011)Growing complexity and uncertainty are still the key challenges enterprises are facing in managing and re-engineering their existing supply chains. To tackle these challenges, they are continuing innovating management practices and piloting emerging technologies for achieving supply chain visibility, agility, adaptability and security. Nowadays, subcontracting has already become a common practice in modern logistics industry through partnership establishment between the involved stakeholders for delivering consignments from a consignor to a consignee. Companies involved in international supply chain are piloting various supply chain security and integrity initiatives promoted by customs to establish trusted business-to-customs partnership for facilitating global trade and cutting out avoidable supply chain costs and delays due to governmental regulations compliance and unnecessary customs inspection. While existing Auto-ID enabled tracking and tracing solutions are promising for implementing these practices, they provide few efficient privacy protection mechanisms for stakeholders involved in the international supply chain to communicate logistics data over dynamic business-to-business and business-government relationships. A unified privacy protection mechanism is proposed in this work to fill in this gap. © 2011 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Critical Management Issues for Implementing RFID in Supply Chain Management

The benefits of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology in the supply chain are fairly compelling. It has the potential to revolutionise the efficiency, accuracy and security of the supply chain with significant impact on overall profitability. A number of companies are actively involved in testing and adopting this technology. It is estimated that the market for RFID products and services will increase significantly in the next few years. Despite this trend, there are major impediments to RFID adoption in supply chain. While RFID systems have been around for several decades, the technology for supply chain management is still emerging. We describe many of the challenges, setbacks and barriers facing RFID implementations in supply chains, discuss the critical issues for management and offer some suggestions. In the process, we take an in-depth look at cost, technology, standards, privacy and security and business process reengineering related issues surrounding RFID technology in supply chains

Reviewing the Drivers and Challenges in RFID Implementation in the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain

Counterfeiting is a global phenomenon that poses a serious financial threat to the pharmaceutical industry and more importantly jeopardizes public safety and security. Different measures, including new laws and regulations, have been put in place to mitigate the threat and tighten control in the pharmaceuticals supply chain. However, it appears that the most promising countermeasure is track-and-trace technology such as electronic-pedigree (E-pedigree) with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. In this study we present a framework exploring the antecedents and consequences of RFID applications in the pharmaceutical supply chain. The framework proposes that counterfeiting and E-pedigree regulation will drive the implementation of RFID in the pharmaceutical supply chain, which in turn provides strategic and operational benefits that enable competitive advantage. Meanwhile, the implementation of RFID requires overcoming many operational, technical and financial challenges. The framework provides a springboard that future study can explore using empirical data

A PLM/KMS integration for Sustainable Reverse Logistics

International audienceThe international competitive market causes the increasing of shorten product life cycle and product development process with the improvement in term of time, cost and quality while increasing the waste generation. To reduce the waste generation, companies follow the environmental legislation and focus more and more on the product lifecycle sustainability. Sustainability on product lifecycle encourages in reducing wastes, saving resources and energy, reusing product and its component and avoiding of usage hazardous substances as well. Therefore, this research work is aimed to establish a Knowledge Management System (KMS) based on a multi-agent system in order to manage sustainability knowledge related to environmental security and performance through the link between Agents' knowledge base and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system. It will help the decision makers in each stage of the lifecycle and make them take into account the environmental impacts of their decisions. The proposed architecture will be illustrated on an industrial case study

HOW IT CAN ADD VALUE TO LOGISTIC SECTOR: BAR CODE SYSTEMS AND RFID (RADIO FREQUENCY IDENTIFICATION) IN LOGISTIC SERVICES

Current digital technology can do a lot in terms of improving the visibility of flows of goods andservices in logistic sector. Managing and locating important assets is undoubtedly a keychallenge for almost any business. Business is time interrelated and shortening the time forcertain operations in business is related to the profit or loss of funds. Time spent searching forcritical equipment can lead to expensive delays or down time, missed deadlines and customercommitments, and wasted labor. RFID asset management is now a well-known solution foridentifying and tracking valuable assets. An RFID asset tracking system uses electromagneticfields to transmit data from an RFID tag to a reader. But what is RFID really? RFID is anacronym for “radio frequency identification” and refers to a technology where digital dataencoded in RFID tags or smart labels are captured by a reader via radio waves, and used inthis case for RFID asset tracking and tools and equipment management. Existing technologiesnow and in the future, play and will play an important role in modern distribution sector for themovement of their products or raw materials. In fact, the benefits of specific technologies, suchas identification of the radio - frequency (RFID) and Global Positioning Systems (GPS) arealready in use by leading distribution companies.Existing technologies now and in the future, play and will play an important role in moderndistribution sector for the movement of their products or raw materials. In fact, the benefits ofspecific technologies, such as identification of the radio - frequency (RFID) and GlobalPositioning Systems (GPS) are already in use by leading distribution companies.Technological changes in communications between the devices themselves, goods andvehicles have helped to significantly improve the quality of services, advantages that everybusiness must take this advantage