Tag: COVID-19

OM in the News: Making Vaccine Bottles

Combating the Covid-19 pandemic is at the top of the global agenda. Providing vaccines to populations around the globe means providing 8 billion doses—with only one for every person in the world. In addition to the availability of the vaccine, a decisive factor in the race against time is the accessibility of the glass vials. Producers of the vials are massively ramping up their production so as not to become the proverbial bottleneck in the supply chain, reports New Equipment Digest (April 6, 2021).

vaccine

However, medical-grade vaccine vials are not standard glass tubes. They are all made of the special glass borosilicate and require customized production lines. For example, the glass must be resistant to a wide range of chemicals and temperature changes and must not contaminate medicines. Any interaction between the container and the liquid inside must be prevented, as any chemical interference could affect the vaccine. Even the smallest scratch, crack or fissure can render an entire batch unusable, contaminate the line during the filling process or even lead to a machine standstill.

The demands on manufacturers are enormous: it is not only a matter of producing large quantities quickly but also of maintaining particularly high-quality standards. So what is needed is very fast quality control with high reliability in defect detection. One solution is vision systems, our topic on page 296 in Chapter 7. Powerful cameras can capture images of 120 vials per minute to be inspected for dimensional accuracy or surface condition with very high precision. Defects such as cracks, scratches, chips, inclusions or stains are detected with an accuracy of 0.1 square millimeters. Intelligent software enables accurate fault description analysis and classification. Testing takes place at various points in the manufacturing process, such as directly after the bottles have been formed or shortly before packaging.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. What are vision systems and why are they a useful OM tool?
  2. Which of the quality control tools in Chapter 6 (Figure 6.6) of your Heizer/Render/Munson text could vial producers employ?

OM in the News: Vaccine Manufacturing in U.S. Races Ahead

Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers are ramping up production, churning out far more doses a week than earlier in the year, progress that is accelerating mass vaccination campaigns in the U.S., writes The Wall Street Journal (March 22, 2021). This is good news and is a followup to our blog (March 21, 2021) how making Covid vaccines is taking away from production of other important drugs. This is a nice place to introduce Figure 7.1 (the four process strategies) to your students.

After a slow start, Pfizer and Moderna have raised output by gaining experience, scaling up production lines and taking other steps like making certain raw materials on their own. Pfizer figured out how to stretch scarce supplies of special filters needed for the vaccine production process by recycling them. (The filters remove certain components from the vaccine during production.) And the company added more high-speed vial-filling lines to its plants.

pfizer2

Moderna took 3 months to make the first 20 million doses of its vaccine last year, but now it is making roughly 40 million a month for the U.S. The U.S. monthly output for the authorized vaccines is expected to reach 132 million doses for March, nearly triple the 48 million in February.

Moderna wasn’t able to produce at maximum capacity right out of the gate because of the need to introduce new equipment and processes in stages. It was still training newly hired workers and encountering issues like equipment malfunctions and holdups in getting replacement parts such as filters. It is planning to further speed output by boosting the number of doses in each vial to 15 from 10. “There has not been a single week since we started that we have not had issues,” said a company exec.

Some 2.5 million people in the U.S. are vaccinated daily on average, up from about 500,000 in early January. The increased output should be enough to fully vaccinate 76 million people in the U.S. in March, 75 million in April, and 89 million more in May.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. Which process in Figure 7.1 of your Heizer/Render/Munson text best fits the vaccine manufacture?
  2. What factors had made the vaccine so difficult to produce?

OM in the News: Scramble to Produce Covid Vaccine Derails Supply of other Drugs

The unprecedented effort to manufacture Covid-19 vaccines is disrupting supplies of other critical medicines in the U.S., including treatments for infectious diseases and injectable drugs that prevent blindness. Pfizer has told U.S. hospitals to expect interruptions to supplies of four of its products — an antibiotic, a steroid and two types of testosterone — according to The Financial Times (March 19, 2021). The drugs require some of the same ingredients and manufacturing capacity as the Covid-19 vaccine that Pfizer has co-developed.

covid

Pfizer warned of “short-term supply interruptions to medicines due to increased vaccine production” and stated that hospitals should “anticipate some disruptions” in the second half of the year. The company said that it aimed to deliver approximately 2 billion doses of its Covid vaccine globally by the end of 2021.

This comes as the U.S. tries to boost vaccine supplies in order to fully reopen its economy. The government has invoked the Defense Production Act to ensure that vaccine makers get the drugs and production capacity they need. But the use of that Korean war-era powers has left a third of pharmaceutical firms scrambling for ingredients, equipment or space on production lines.

Other groups involved in medicine production and distribution are also struggling. Schott, one of the world’s largest glassmakers, warned that there was a wait of 12- 18 months for new orders of glass vials. That shortage is affecting almost every type of injectable drug in the U.S., including chemotherapy, insulin and other medicines that are found in crash carts in ERs, ICUs, and surgical suites in hospitals.

Catalent, a contract manufacturer working for the vaccine makers Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, is also prioritizing large orders of injections over other treatments, meaning thousands of patients have had to do without Tepezza, a treatment for thyroid eye disease.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. Chapter 13 of your Heizer/Render/Munson text lists 5 capacity options used as aggregate planning strategies. Which could Pfizer and others employ today?
  2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each option you named?

OM in the News: Rival Drugmakers Form Alliances

Some of the world’s biggest drugmakers are joining forces with rivals to help produce Covid-19 vaccines, forging unusual alliances that promise to substantially increase supplies by this summer. As we write in Chapter 5, Design of Goods and Services, alliances are a good strategy “when substantial resources are required and sizable risk is present.”

Normally big pharm companies compete to sell cancer, arthritis and other drugs. The desperate need for Covid-19 vaccines, however, is turning fierce industry competitors into fast pandemic friends. Sanofi SA recently agreed to help make a vaccine from Pfizer after Sanofi’s experimental Covid-19 shot suffered a 5-month setback, freeing up a production line in Frankfurt. Novartis AG also agreed to hep Pfizer produce more doses.

Endo International has agreed to help Novavax produce its shot.

The collaborations, along with the authorization of newer vaccines and fine-tuning by the vaccine makers themselves, could help significantly boost global output, reports The Wall Street Journal (Feb. 24, 2021). Early supplies have been limited, as vaccine makers needed time to increase production and overcome early hiccups and problems getting raw materials.

The production alliances are the latest example of industry rivals coming together to fight the pandemic, starting with research tie-ups. They build upon a year-long effort by the drug industry and partners to crank up capabilities to make everything from the tiny vials that hold the shots to raw ingredients that make them. But production can’t start overnight. Vaccine manufacturing is a complex process that often requires training staff, upgrading facilities and buying new equipment. 

Novavax, which has a vaccine in the late stages of development, doesn’t own a manufacturing plant and has to lean on other companies to produce the shot. Baxter said one of its plants in Germany will help fill and finish Novavax’s vaccine, as did Endo in Rochester, Michigan–under pressure from the U.S. government.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. What will happen to these alliances once the pandemic is under control?
  2. Why is it challenging to produce the new vaccines for another company?

OM in the News: Why the Europeans are Not Vaccinated

As Western governments faced criticism for their pandemic management last summer, EU officials began work on a vaccine-procurement plan they hoped would put the continent at the forefront of efforts to banish the coronavirus and reopen economies, writes The Wall Street Journal (Feb. 3, 2021). Instead of its 27 member states fighting for doses from a few manufacturers, the EU would centralize purchases for 450 million inhabitants, bringing prices down and ensuring that residents of rich and poor countries alike would get equal access to the best shots available.

Half a year later, an acute shortage of doses is keeping the EU’s vaccination effort from taking off, making it likely that only a small portion of the general public will get a shot by the end of summer. The reasons: The EU was late in ordering vaccines compared with the U.S. and the U.K.; it bet on companies that have yet to deliver; and when delays started creeping in, it blamed the manufacturers instead of restarting negotiations.

A vaccination center in Hannover, Germany

Israel has vaccinated 55% of its population, the U.K. 14% and the U.S. 9%, against under 3% for the EU. While other governments were wooing vaccine makers with subsidies and immunity from liability in case of side effects, the EU focused on pushing prices down and slowing negotiations, which resulted in late orders. It also spread its purchases widely to reduce risk, signing deals with companies that are still months away from approved shots. And it was slow to authorize the vaccines it had purchased.

In January, the makers of all vaccines approved for use in the EU (Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, and AstraZeneca) announced cuts in deliveries because of manufacturing bottlenecks, forcing governments to slow or pause vaccinations. Yet given how complex vaccine manufacturing is, early bookers are less likely to get hit if manufacturing problems appear as production ramps up.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. What are the cultural differences in vaccine acceptance in various countries?
  2. What are the manufacturing complications that are slowing production of vaccine shots?

OM in the News: Capacity Problems for Chip Makers

Semiconductor companies are asking their customers for patience as the industry works through a sharp increase in demand from makers of everything from cars to consumer electronics. But there is no quick fix to the situation. As we point out in Supp. 7, Capacity and Constraint Management, adding new chip-making machinery is expensive and slow. And some of the deepest supply problems are taking place with older production lines that are less lucrative for manufacturers. In the whole semiconductor industry there is very little spare capacity right now, reports The Wall Street Journal (Jan. 15, 2021).

Demand for laptops has skyrocketed, and remote work during the Covid-19 era has increased appetite for cloud-computing and their data centers. Plus a surge in demand for chips that go into new 5G phones has put a squeeze on capacity. This chip shortage will likely last through 2022.

Ford said it was idling a factory in Kentucky because of chip shortages

With chip plants effectively running all out already, auto makers and consumer-electronics manufacturers are competing for every bit of limited manufacturing capacity. The car industry was among the first to be hit. VW is reducing production at its factories in China, Mexico, Tennessee and Germany. And in the face of the shortages, GM just asked suppliers to stockpile a year’s worth of chips.

The auto industry bears some responsibility for failing to place orders early enough in anticipation of the demand recovery. Over the past 2 decades it has become one of the largest consumers of computer chips, rivaling the PC industry, as cars become increasingly powered by software. Chips now power everything from engines and emissions control to brakes, A/C, windows, and a growing array of sophisticated safety features such as automatic lane control and crash avoidance.

The production cycles for chips are long, and the development cycles are even longer. Lead times across the chip industry have risen to 6-10 months, from 8-10 weeks before the pandemic.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. Which time horizon in Figure S7.1 is impacting the chip industry’s capacity options?
  2. What tactics might the industry employ to adjust capacity to demand? (Hint: see p. 312 in your Heizer/Render/Munson text).

OM in the News: The Last Vaccine Mile is a Long One

The U.K. became the first Western nation to start immunizing its residents from the coronavirus this week. But the speed of authorization and implementation of the program are being tempered by the reality of getting the delicate Pfizer – BioNTech vaccine to the most vulnerable, reports The Wall Street Journal (Dec,11. 2020).

Reaching the housebound and those in nursing homes is a challenge that offers a cautionary tale for U.S. health officials as they contemplate their own rollout. The main reason is that the conditions needed for the vaccine’s storage aren’t usually found in long-term care facilities. The vaccine must be kept at temperatures of minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit and once thawed, used within 2 hours if at room temperature–certainly a Chapter 11 logistics management problem if there ever was one. Another challenge is that the vials holding the vaccine come in packs of 975 and must all be used once opened—nursing home providers say no elderly-care residence exists in the U.K. with so many residents.

Michael Tibbs, 99, was given the Covid-19 vaccine Dec. 8th in Portsmouth, England.

The vaccine must be turned upside down—but not shaken— and returned to resting before it is given. The delicate technology it contains, named messenger RNA, is so new that Pfizer is still running stability studies to work out whether it can be stored for longer periods at warmer temperatures. The clock starts ticking as soon as they thaw the vials and they have 12 hours to complete the pack down, label the boxes and then get the vials to the mobile teams and into care homes.

Distributing a biological product, which requires kid-glove treatment, to the hardest-to-reach corners of Britain has “very significant logistical challenges,” said a government minister.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. A few OM issues are discussed in this WSJ article. Identify other major distribution problems we are sure to face.
  2. What can governments and/or citizens do to assist in implementing/administering the vaccine?

OM in the News: Apple’s “Goldilocks” Product Strategy

Apple this year released 5 new iPhone models, the most in the device’s history. Apple started in 2007 with one iPhone but soon established a “good-better-best” strategy, where budget and premium products flank “Goldilocks” options.

For years, the company did this by keeping older models around at slashed prices, writes The Wall Street Journal (Dec. 7, 2020). But recently, it has introduced more new options at various price tiers. This year’s lineup ranged from the $399 late-adopter-targeted iPhone SE to the feature-packed $1,099 iPhone 12 Pro Max—with a “just right” iPhone 12 in the middle. The company also gave Apple Watch shoppers 3 tiers of options for the first time.

While it may be more confusing for consumers to navigate the price and quality differences between the models, this kind of price ladder is strategic and ubiquitous—from airliner cabins to gas pumps.

The trick with offering multiple versions of a product is to offer enough to help people identify their own strike price but not enough to overwhelm them. “Apple is best at this,” said one industry expert, “creating variation between models in the number of camera lenses and the different levels of storage capacity. The ‘good’ option gives firms the opportunity to keep customers within the brand, for those who face economic pressure to downsize their lifestyle.” 

The WSJ article also looked at a $275 bread-baking appliance sold by Williams-Sonoma. When the retailer added a second model, similar to the first but larger and more expensive at $429, sales of the cheaper model doubled. Peloton employed a similar strategy with its new 2-tiered bike offering. When the company released a new stationary Bike+ for $2,495—with a bigger screen and more powerful software—it marked its original bike down to $1,895, from $2,245. Covid-19 has led to an explosion of demand for connected bikes as gyms closed–and Peloton’s sales jumped 172% compared with last year.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. In Chapter 5, we discuss product life cycles (see p.164-5). Where do the Apple 6 Plus, 8 Plus, 11, and 12 Pro fall?
  2. Why does Apple launch new products so frequently?

OM in the News: Hacking the Covid Vaccine Supply Chain

Cyber attackers have targeted the cold supply chain needed to deliver Covid-19 vaccines, reports Financial Times (Dec. 3, 2020).  The hackers appeared to be trying to disrupt or steal information about the vital processes to keep vaccines cold as they travel from factories to hospitals and doctors’ offices. The attacks highlight the importance of cyber security diligence at each step in the vaccine supply chain.

Many of the Covid-19 vaccines have to be kept cold to keep them from spoiling. Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine must be kept between -70C and -80C, while Moderna’s needs to be transported at minus 20C. 

Hackers appeared to be trying to disrupt the vital processes to keep vaccines cold

IBM’s head of threat intelligence said he believed the hackers were either looking to disrupt the vaccine delivery process or steal intellectual property.  “One side of it is cyber espionage: How do you get vaccines out? How is the manufacturing process working for refrigeration? How are you managing the entire logistics chain? There’s also potential for disruption, being able to launch attacks that disrupt vaccines, and their distribution to undermine trust in them.” He added that it was vital to treat the vaccine supply chain as “a new type of global critical infrastructure” to help them secure the products that could help end the pandemic.  “These refrigeration companies are not going to have the same security tools that advanced financial institutions have.”

No matter who conducted the attacks, they underscore how everything about coronavirus vaccines — how to make them, test them and move them — has become vital information around the globe. A year ago, nations including Russia and China were focusing their covert efforts on stealing secrets about missiles and AI advances; 6 months ago, intelligence agencies shifted their focus to obtaining, or defending, proprietary vaccine research.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. List all of the major risks that vaccine supply chains face. ( Hint: see Table 11.3 on p. 480 of your Heizer/Render/Munson OM text).
  2. Which of the 10 OM decisions (that the text is structured around in Table 1.2) are involved in vaccine preparation and delivery?

OM in the News: When Pigs Fly

When pigs fly—and they are doing so a lot this year—they usually take wide-body jets across the world, writes The Wall Street Journal (Nov. 11, 2020). One of the few bright spots for a global airline industry has been an increase in live animal cargo flights. Cargo planes this year have taken thousands of pigs, goats, alpacas, cats and dogs on international flights, and demand for the fastest mode of animal transportation is rising even as many human passengers shun traveling by plane.

Hundreds of pigs can travel on each cargo flight, with groups in large wooden crates roomy enough for them to move around in, and that fit nicely in Boeing 777s and 747s. Other than the flight crew, the only other humans aboard are the animals’ handlers. They keep an eye on the pigs’ mood, fill up their water sipper bottles and “give them a little bit of encouragement.” 

Pigs relax in their crate aboard a Boeing 747 on a flight from Denmark to Russia.

China has been buying lots of pigs abroad after losing many of its own hogs to African swine fever and is expected to import 25,000 live hogs in 2020, compared with 4,000 in 2019. Many of those will fly. Qatar Airways has added 50% more livestock flights this year in response to higher demand. On a typical day, the airline transports 10 horses and 500 farm animals, including cows, goats and sheep.

Some animal flights haven’t panned out. Earlier this year, a Qatar flight to Johannesburg to pick up young giraffes destined for a zoo was forced to return empty. In the 6 weeks it had taken to get all the paperwork sorted before the flight, the giraffes had grown too tall for the 10 foot plane ceilings. (Adult giraffes can be 18 feet tall.)

Pigs grow quickly, too. Earlier this year, 1,300 young hogs that were scheduled to be flown from the U.S. to the Philippines were bumped when their plane was requisitioned by the U.S. government to move PPEs. A new flight was secured 2½ months later, but the original young hogs had become older hogs, and much bigger—too heavy for the 85 tons the plane could handle.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. Why use planes for these shipments?
  2. What are the OM issues faced when shipping animals?

OM in the News: Drones Seek a Role in Delivery of Covid-19 Vaccine

A handful of drone-delivery startups want to help transport Covid-19 vaccines from distribution facilities to health centers, vying for a logistical role in what is likely to be a sprawling and complex undertaking, reports The Wall Street Journal (Nov. 2, 2020). Several of these businesses have entered into medical delivery partnerships with drug companies and retailers—including Merck and Walmart — that could help position them to take part in the high-profile effort to distribute Covid-19 vaccines. Walmart said the pilot project with DroneUp will help the company learn about the role drone deliveries can play in pandemic response, health-care delivery and retail.

Meanwhile, some startups have discussed with governments around the world their ability to use unmanned aerial drones to transport vaccine doses, mainly in remote areas. The efforts are indicative of drone companies’ ambitions to reshape shipping and logistics. Delivering Covid-19 vaccines would enable drone startups to demonstrate on a world stage their ability to streamline operations and cut costs across distribution networks.

A Volansi drone

To be sure, using drones to transport Covid-19 vaccines likely would represent a sliver of the overall effort. They would primarily be for hard-to-access regions and fly along fixed routes to move doses in bulk.

Drone fleets can reduce reliance on drivers, increase delivery capacity and speed up the time it takes for supplies to reach patients. These advantages would be valuable in complex and urgent Covid-19 vaccine distribution.  Fleets of dozens of drones, for instance, could make half-hour trips delivering thousands of vials each day to health centers in remote areas.

Merck partnered with Volansi recently to fly medicines and vaccines from its manufacturing facility in North Carolina to a health clinic in unmanned drones. Vidant Health System is participating in the program, which is using a Volansi drone capable of carrying 5 pounds of medical cargo to locations up to 50 miles away.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. What are the advantages of using drones for vaccine delivery?
  2. The disadvantages?

OM in the News: Score One for Humans over Supply Chain Robots

Walmart has ended its effort to use roving robots in store aisles to keep track of its inventory, reversing a 5 year push to automate the task with the hulking machines after finding during the coronavirus pandemic that humans can help get similar results.

The retail giant has ended its contract with robotics company Bossa Nova Robotics, with which it joined to add 500 six-foot-tall inventory-scanning machines to stores. Walmart had hoped the technology could help reduce labor costs and increase sales by making sure products are kept in stock, reports The Wall Street Journal (Nov. 3, 2020).

A robot rolled through aisles at a Natrona Heights, Pa., Walmart

Walmart ended the partnership because it found different, sometimes simpler solutions that proved just as useful. As more shoppers flock to online delivery and pickup because of Covid-19 concerns, Walmart has more workers walking the aisles frequently to collect online orders, gleaning new data on inventory problems. It is pursuing ways to use those workers to monitor product amounts and locations, as well as other automation technology.

In addition, Walmart has concerns about how shoppers react to seeing a robot working in a store. It said earlier this year that the Bossa Nova robots would be in 1,000 of its 4,700 U.S. stores, bringing more automation to stores, characterizing the machines as robot “sidekicks” for store workers. (Bossa Nova laid off 50% of its staff after the contract with Walmart ended). Walmart does continue to use other robots in stores, such as floor scrubbers that move through aisles alone.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. In Ch. 7, we discuss “Technology in Services.” Walmart discontinued the Bossa Nova model, but what technologies does it still depend on in its stores?
  2. What were the strengths and weaknesses of the Bossa Nova robots?

OM in the News: The Queue Returns

With social-distancing measures in place for the foreseeable future, queue management—our topic in Module D—is being recast as a health-and-wellness hero. “The design practices and software tools that line experts have been working on for years might become as common as the queues they manage”, writes The Atlantic (Oct.28, 2020).

Disney is thought to have invented the “switchback queue” (that snakes back and forth) during the 1964 World Fair in NYC. Guests stopped complaining about the long queues at the Disney attractions, even if the lines hadn’t actually gone down. Over the next decades, the company perfected the waiting experience with props and preshows designed to entertain but also distract its guests from the endless waiting. In 1999, Disney’s FastPass allowed guests to pick their battles by skipping lines that weren’t worth the wait. Ever since, having fewer people in queues and more roaming the park has been the name of the game.

Queues of shoppers maintaining distance against coronavirus outside a market in Piura, Peru

Distractions give human minds pause. But designers and engineers still have not figured out how to vanquish long lines. In a pandemic, frivolous distractions won’t cut it. The people who waited for 5 hours today to cast a ballot don’t need distractions from the wait; they need measures that will keep them safe and, better yet, allow them to avoid waiting in the first place. (On average, people overestimate how long they’ve waited in a line by about 36% by the way. This means that the actual wait time, no matter how short, isn’t the main problem; it’s is how long people feel they’ve been waiting).

WaitTime, a creator of crowd-intelligence-software designed for stadiums, uses ceiling-mounted cameras, computer vision, and patented AI to interpret crowd conditions in real time, so published wait times are always up to date. 

New fear of proximity could spell the end of the physical line. Eight months into the pandemic, make-do solutions such as tape markers and DIY signs are giving way to more deliberate strategies such as magnetic queuing grids, virtual lines, and timed-entry passes.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. Why do queues depend on cultural/social habits?
  2. What measures can be used to force people to stand 6 feet apart?

OM in the News: How COVID-19 Changed Warehouses

In the first flush of the COVID-19 pandemic, warehouses rushed to do what they could to keep their workers safe. Now that warehouse managers have had time to see what’s worked, what hasn’t, and what they could’ve done better, they’ve adjusted their workflows, making changes that keep workers safe. Changes for worker safety dovetailed with a surge in demand for e-commerce, which has pushed warehouses to adjust at the same time, reports Supply Chain Dive (Oct. 27, 2020).

Warehouse managers are making investments in finding the right PPE and shifting workplace design to accommodate social distancing. “How do I incorporate temperature monitoring so I can screen potentially sick workers? How do I look at sick leave policies? How do I leverage technology to trace and track movement and contacts, if someone reports that they’ve tested positive?” are some of the questions managers are asking.

Most warehouse design changes are today less about the spaces and more about how workers move through them. Technology has played an important role, from applications that have employees do check-ins about potential symptoms, to algorithms that create routes for workers that ensure social distancing. An algorithm can recognize within an aisle if employees are following the 6 feet rule separation. AI and machine learning can use data from cameras that are networked into a central hub. Such a system knows how many people should be within that aisle within a specific time and if too many tasks are going to that aisle. Technology can also sense when an employee is not working at usual capacity, which could be a sign of illness. 

With hiring at full force this holiday season, companies are trying to “pre-skill” those coming into their workforce with a basic understanding of inventory management, transportation, logistics and manufacturing. And they are also working to “upskill” leaders to be able to assimilate technology with the workforce.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. Prior to COVID-19, what were the main issues facing warehouse managers? (Hint: see Chapter 9’s section on Warehouse and Storage Layouts on p.375-77 of your OM text).
  2. What are the new OM warehouse issues?

OM in the News: Protecting Covid-19 Vaccines from Theft

Health authorities, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies are storing Covid-19 vaccines in secure, undisclosed locations and taking other steps to protect the shots against a looming threat: theft.

As the leading vaccine candidates advance closer to use, vaccine makers such as Pfizer are deploying GPS software for tracking distribution and plotting fake shipments in dummy trucks to confuse criminals. Glassmaker Corning  is equipping vials with black-light verification to curb counterfeiting. And some hospitals expected to be among the first vaccination sites are beefing up their pharmacies’ security systems.

Initial vaccine supplies are expected to be limited, with some shots gaining authorization as early as November.

The goal is protecting the shots against professional thieves who have a long history of targeting valuable medicines, and have pilfered Covid-19 tests, masks and other personal protective equipment during the coronavirus pandemic, reports The Wall Street Journal (Oct. 22, 2020).

The government has arranged for U.S. marshals to accompany shipments of vaccines, which are currently stored at undisclosed locations, once the shots are authorized for distribution. Despite such measures, logistics specialists worry the shots could be vulnerable to theft at weak links in the supply chain, such as distribution centers, truck stops and hospitals with lax security.

Though drugmakers have been producing doses, initial supplies are expected to be limited, making any shot a coveted commodity. Industry experts are concerned they could be intercepted by sophisticated criminals, foreign governments or individuals eager to get vaccines before prioritized groups. Over the past 5 years, world-wide incidents such as theft and counterfeiting of pharmaceutical products rose nearly 70%.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. Why will this vaccine’s distribution be a significant challenge?
  2. Table 11.3 in your Heizer/Render/Munson text provides a list of 10 supply chain risks. Which apply in this case? How?