For Manuel Blasco, Roche’s Product Manager for Supply and Strategic Planning, deploying OMP’s cloud-based Unison Planning™ as the integrated planning solution to tie it all together is an essential part of the journey:

"One of the key benefits of the Unison Planning system is the end-to-end visibility it provides for the entire supply chain. This level of visibility gives us real-time insights into our inventory levels, production schedules, and transportation plans."

"It means that we can make more informed decisions about our supply chain operations, reducing the risk of stockouts, optimizing production, and improving customer service. It’s also an excellent basis to further simplify and automate planning processes. And it means we’ll be doing even better at getting the right treatments at the right time to the right patients.”

Supply chain planning is all about decision-making

More accurate predictions, better balance capital, cost, and service

Analysis revealed that developing this kind of patient-centric supply chain would entail a far-reaching digital transformation of the whole planning process for Roche. “It was both a necessity and an opportunity,” explains Gerbracht. “Our planning apparatus was reaching its limits, so we needed to have more accurate predictions about the future, backed by data and using modern forecasting techniques. We needed more advanced analytics to help us decide how to use constrained resources more effectively and better balance capital, cost, and service.”

“We also needed a shared platform where we could make collaborative decisions across the entire supply chain. And we wanted to plan more proactively – up to 10 years ahead – so that we could make more appropriate decisions about the future. That’s why we needed a digital solution that can develop and evaluate multiple scenarios over different time horizons.”

The full scope in one solution

More grip on constraints and better plans with alert-driven planning

Features of the solution include the multi-level planning of capacities and campaigns, taking into account shelf-life, regulatory, and artwork constraints as well as performance and service targets. The quality of tank planning, including the crucial planning of mobile tanks, has improved a lot, stretching farther out in the planning horizon. Production sequences and line utilization are optimized, cutting down on change-over times, and taking care of key bottlenecks. Mathematical or AI-based solvers are used to keep an eye on supply chain constraints and KPIs.

Better collaboration, more trust

It does mean that the project implies a significant effort to effect organizational change. “Yes, that’s part of the journey, and not the easiest part,” confirms IT Product Manager Pawel  Jakielaszek. “But I see that our planners are increasingly with us. They are dedicated to figuring out how to get the most value out of it. They are creating their own report pivots for the dashboard. And they are building fancy business rules to automate tasks.”

Ana Gerbracht adds: “One crucial decision to accelerate acceptance and improve cross-company collaboration was to put in place a company-wide planning department with both centralized and local roles. This allowed us to break away from the rather fragmented and silo-based functional organization we had. The collaborative spirit has been further driven by Unison Planning. For example, I vividly remember the first automated transfer of planning decisions back and forth between operational planning and sales and operations. This really brought the people closer to one another.”

About OMP

OMP helps companies facing complex planning challenges to excel, grow, and thrive by offering the best digitized supply chain planning solution on the market.

Its Unison Planning™ concept has a unique approach. It handles all supply chain planning challenges in a unified way. It’s full scope and in-depth. Unison Planning™ synchronizes all planning stages, horizons, functions, and roles. From source to deliver, from strategic to operational planning. The unique combination of services and technology boosts collaboration throughout your value chain, from forecasters to schedulers, from business leaders to technology experts.

Unison Planning™ is a cloud-based, out-of-the-box solution for industry-specific challenges. Hundreds of customers in consumer goods, life sciences, chemicals, metals and paper & packaging run it to make the right decisions at the heart of their business. Valued as a thought leader by experts as Gartner, OMP invests one out of every three dollars earned into innovation.

OMP for Life Sciences is an industry-specific solution tailored to the life sciences industry, and already in use at more than 250 plants.