Having a secure supply chain is important for companies that move expensive or highly desirable products between their facilities and with customers. Pharmaceutical companies are especially aware that their products are a target for theft where criminals can sell the items for large profits. In 2009, Novo Nordisk reported the theft of an $11 million truckload of insulin, where it was resold to legitimate distributors, but because it was not stored in the correct manner, the product given to patients was not effective and threatened lives. This and other thefts have a long lasting affect on the reputation of the company. With inadequate security along the supply chain a company can lose public trust which can be immeasurable. Supply chain security is as important for some industry sectors as manufacturing or R&D. Without the secure knowledge that a product will arrive at a facility or a customer a company is risking its reputation and potentially its survival.
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Having a secure supply chain is very important when you are talking about pharmaceutical products. I have heard of shipments being stolen a lot and sold on the black market. But the concern I have for pharma companies is the introduction of counterfeits into the supply chain. This is a topic that is very worrying.
The company I work for has issues with theft from the third party contractors we have that are involved in the delivery of goods to our customers and to our distribution centres. The shipping company said it would put GPS trackers on the vehicles but that has not happened and our product goes missing.
I worked for a company that was contracted to perform the hiring of drivers for a shipping company and we did extensive background checks and received references and were very good at what we did. However after a few months, the shipping company said that they couldn’t afford our services and went back to taking anyone off the street. This seems very short-sighted, but I thought I would let people know that if the shipping companies don’t care then the security of the supply chain is just going to get worse.
One of the 3PL’s that we had used was always losing product. They installed GPS in the vehicles and had a turnover of drivers, but it turned out the warehouse staff were not good at securing the premises after hours. There issue was going from a three shift to a two shift and a lack of procedures on keeping the warehouse safe.