Internet of Things (IoT)–blockchain-enabled pharmaceutical supply chain resilience in the post-pandemic era

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the current operating environment of pharmaceutical supply chain (PSC) has rapidly changed and faced increasing risks of disruption. The Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain not only help enhance the efficiency of PSC operations in the information technology domain but also address complex related issues and improve the visibility, flexibility, and transparency of these operations. Although IoT and blockchain have been widely examined in the areas of supply chain and logistics management, further work on PSC is expected by the public to enhance its resilience. To respond to this call, this paper combines a literature review with semi-structured interviews to investigate the characteristics of PSC, the key aspects affecting PSC, and the challenges faced by PSC in the post-pandemic era. An IoT–blockchain-integrated hospital-side oriented PSC management model is also developed. This paper highlights how IoT and blockchain technology can enhance supply chain resilience and provides a reference on how PSC members can cope with the associated risks.

Customer Prioritization for Medical Supply Chain During COVID-19 Pandemic

During COVID-19,the escalated demand for various pharmaceutical products with the existing production capacity of pharmaceutical companies has stirred the need to prioritize its customers in order to fulfill their demand.This study considers a two-echelon pharmaceutical supply chain considering various pharma-distributors as its suppliers and hospitals,pharmacies,and retail stores as its customers.Previous studies have generally considered a balanced situation in terms of supply and demand whereas this study considers a special situation of COVID-19 pandemic where demand exceeds supply Various criteria have been identified from the literature that influences the selection of customers.A questionnaire has been developed to collect primary data from pharmaceutical suppliers pertaining to customerselection criteria.These criteria have been prioritized with respect to eigenvalues obtained from Principal Component Analysis and also validated with the experts’domain-related knowledge using Analytical Hierarchy Process.Profit potential appeared to be the most important criteria of customer selection followed by trust and service convenience brand loyalty,commitment,brand awareness,brand image,sustainable behavior,and risk.Subsequently,Multi Criteria Decision Analysis has been performed to prioritize the customerselection criteria and customers with respect to selection criteria.Three experts with seven and three and ten years of experience have participated in the study.Findings of the study suggest large hospitals,large pharmacies,and small retail stores are the highly preferred customers.Moreover,findings of prioritization of customer-selection criteria fromboth Principal Component Analysis and Analytical Hierarchy Process are consistent.Furthermore,this study considers the experience of three experts to calculate an aggregate score of priorities to reach an effective decision.Unlike traditional supply chain problems of supplier selection,this study considers a selection of customers and is useful for procurement and supply chain managers to prioritize customers while considering multiple selection criteria.

Janus:Toward preventing counterfeits in supply chains utilizing a multi-quorum blockchain

The modern pharmaceutical supply chain lacks transparency and traceability,resulting in alarming rates of counterfeit products entering the market.These illegitimate products cause harm to end users and wreak havoc on the supply chain itself,costing billions of dollars in profit loss.In this paper,in response to the Drug Supply Chain Security Act(DSCSA),we introduce Janus,a novel pharmaceutical track-and-trace system that utilizes blockchain and cloning-resistant hologram tags to prevent counterfeits from entering the pharmaceutical supply chain.We design a multi-quorum consensus protocol that achieves load balancing across the network.We perform a security analysis to show robustness against various threats and attacks.The implementation of Janus proves that the system is fair,scalable,and resilient.

Solving vehicle routing problem with time windows using metaheuristic approaches

Purpose-Drugs are strategic products with essential functions in human health.An optimum design of the pharmaceutical supply chain is critical to avoid economic damage and adverse effects on human health.The vehicle-routing problem,focused on finding the lowest-cost routes with available vehicles and constraints,such as time constraints and road length,is an important aspect of this.In this paper,the vehicle routing problem(VRP)for a pharmaceutical company in Turkey is discussed.Design/methodology/approach-A mixed-integer programming(MIP)model based on the vehicle routing problem with time windows(VRPTW)is presented,aiming to minimize the total route cost with certain constraints.As the model provides an optimum solution for small problem sizes with the GUROBI®solver,for large problem sizes,metaheuristic methods that simulate annealing and adaptive large neighborhood search algorithms are proposed.A real dataset was used to analyze the effectiveness of the metaheuristic algorithms.The proposed simulated annealing(SA)and adaptive large neighborhood search(ALNS)were evaluated and compared against GUROBI®and each other through a set of real problem instances.Findings-The model is solved optimally for a small-sized dataset with exact algorithms;for solving a larger dataset,however,metaheuristic algorithms require significantly lesser time.For the problem addressed in this study,while the metaheuristic algorithms obtained the optimum solution in less than one minute,the solution in the GUROBI®solver was limited to one hour and three hours,and no solution could be obtained in this time interval.Originality/value-The VRPTW problem presented in this paper is a real-life problem.The vehicle fleet owned by the factory cannot be transported between certain suppliers,which complicates the solution of the problem.