An analysis and mitigation of demand variability on external supply chains

In the pharmaceutical industry, increasing product complexity, shifts towards specialty medicine and growth in emerging markets have resulted in increased forecast variation and manufacturing complexity for new products. In the past six years, AstraZeneca has outperformed its peers in research and development productivity, increasing the number and speed of product launches. The resulting demand variability and shifting operational environment have led to financial and non-financial impacts, such as poor inventory performance and strained supplier relationships. The objective of this research is to identify processes and procedures that amplify the impact of demand variability and the areas in the end-to-end operation that are significantly impacted. The secondary objective is to identify process improvements in the existing system and develop strategies to mitigate the risk of demand variability.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Sloan School of Management

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Wright, Meghan Savage.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Thomas Roemer and Jung-Hoon Chun.

• Sloan School of Management.
• Mechanical Engineering.
• Leaders for Global Operations Program.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/122267

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/122267