Modeling variability for biologics strategic planning

Making strategic decisions about resource capabilities in the uncertain business of drug development is a challenging task. Novartis, a Swiss pharmaceutical company, is expanding from its success in small molecule therapeutics into the attractive area of biologic therapeutics, both monoclonal antibody and microbial forms. While Novartis has experience developing these types of therapeutics, they have not fully-developed the quantity that the Research group expects to source the pipeline with in the next few years. Therefore the Development group needs to grow. Determining the right number and type of scientists and technicians to hire is difficult due to the variability in the portfolio. The long development timelines, low and variable success rates impact how projects progress through the pipeline. A Monte Carlo simulation model forecasts variability and displays a numerical range of projects and headcount requirements expected for several years. This data is essential for project managers, function heads, and operations leaders to develop the five-year strategic plan for biologic development. This model quantifies the uncertainty of input variables to deliver a calculated risk of output variables, which provides useful and important information for making strategic business decisions.

Department dc:contributor.department

Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Conant, Tamara L. (Tamara Lynn)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Charles Cooney and Ernst Berndt.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
• Sloan School of Management.
• Leaders for Manufacturing Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

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

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/53311

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/53311