In any company or industry, managing the supply chain and its product-related information is important to business success. For life sciences organizations, supply chain and risk management are especially crucial due to the industry?s intensifying cost, price and regulatory pressures.Medical device technology companies stand to gain significant benefits by creating end-to-end?supply chain visibility?such as cost savings and faster growth, according to an article on the Supply & Demand Chain Executive website.

But what exactly is ?medical supply chain visibility??

As a supply chain creates products, it simultaneously generates enormous amounts of information ? about materials and products, plus vendors and customers. At every turn, there?s also transaction information, including purchase orders and manufacturing orders, invoices and delivery notes. How should companies manage all of this complex data? What regulations must they meet along the way?

Organizations need an end-to-end solution to manage the entire supply chain and risk management process, including suppliers, relationship trends, governance and compliance. Achieving effective medical supply chain visibility starts with assessing a company?s current supply chain and pinpointing steps needed to help achieve full visibility. Then, companies can move on to implementation, improving the transparency in organizations and people, processes, data and technology.

This solution also must be able to integrate seamlessly with other data systems, take advantage of robust workflow capabilities and provide deep business intelligence that can improve operational efficiency.?It?s important to integrate a number of product?data management systems, including a procedural process that ensures timely, accurate and consistent data classification.

This end-to-end solution offers potential benefits to medical device technology companies, the Supply & Demand Chain Executive article explains. Perhaps most significant to the safety-critical medical device industry, supply chain visibility also can help enhance patient safety and reduce regulatory compliance risks, thanks to comprehensive tracking and record-keeping.

Source:?Supply & Demand Chain Executive, January 2013