Global Health supply chain control tower

A global health supply chain control tower should provide a window into what is happening and what can potentially happen in the supply of health commodities from manufacturers to end consumers.

The control tower should,

  • facilitate planning that is coordinated across all SC partners
  • signal potential exceptions such as shipment delays and stock-outs
  • enable proactive mitigation of exceptions
  • provide insights that support effective & impactful decisions

…. by aggregating relevant data such as procurements, shipments, inventory & consumption from across the supply chain.

 

A control tower should provide a window into what is happening and what can potentially happen in the supply of health commodities from manufacturers to end consumers.

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Key Considerations

DATA

  • Consistent & on-time availability of required supply chain data
  • Quality & reliability of data
  • Existence of systems that can share data electronically
  • Willingness of supply chain partners to share relevant data
  • Data integrity when combining data from disparate systems

Scope

  • The number & variety of supply chain processes that data is aggregated from
  • Scope of visibility & control – global, national or sub-national
  • Clarity of what can be controlled and what cannot
  • Use cases that determine the key benefits expected from the control tower
  • Common understanding of objectives of the control tower among all partners

Resources

  • Availability of skilled workforce to manage control tower operations
  • Deployment of cost-effective technology platform
  • Reliability of supporting technology infrastructure

Change Management

  • Policies to govern data sharing across partners
  • Leadership to manage expectations around process changes
  • Clarity on data ownership & use

Sustainability

  • Funding to support continued operation
  • Clarity of control tower system ownership
  • Scalability to aggregate data from additional sources in the future

Deployment Approaches

1

Use-case based approach to determine scope and better utilize available resources

For e.g., Fulfillment, Planning or Inventory Management Use Case

2

Phased deployment of capabilities to facilitate incremental adoption of control tower scope

For e.g., Starting with national and gradually enabling visibility of sub-national

3

Designing a control tower platform that can gradually scale and sustain in the long-run

Technology infrastructure that can expand to accommodate increasing volumes of data