Supply Chain Resilience: A Portuguese Pharmaceutical Case Study

In recent times with the globalization of the economy, companies’ supply chains have been under increasing pressure and more prone to disruptions. The risks that supply chains face have exponentially increased due to this added complexity. As such, understanding what risks affect supply chain and how supply chain resilience can be potentialized is of high importance. This study focusses on identifying the risks present in the Portuguese pharmaceutical sector and the supply chain resilience practices adopted by supply chain linked professionals in this same sector. This study focusses on the risks and supply chain practices present in the pharmaceutical sector. Seven interviews were conducted with supply chain professionals from six companies with presence in Portugal. An analysis is made in order to understand what those professionals and companies identified as supply chains risks and what supply chain resilience practices they have adopted. The result revealed a total of twenty-one identified supply chain risks with a primary focus on environmental, supply and process risks. Key risks include overextension of the supply chain due to globalization and supplier concentration. Furthermore, results also indicated that interviewed professionals and their companies focused more on the readiness and responsiveness phases of supply chain resilience, often neglecting the recovery and growth phases as shown by the type of supply chain resilience practices they adopt. The major consequence of supply chain disruptions was identified as stockouts, which in the pharmaceutical sector has not only financial but also public health consequences. Finally, there were twenty-one supply chain resilience practices identified within the visibility, flexibility, redundancy and collaboration dimensions. Results point out that companies do understand supply chain resilience but often limit its application in informal programs and with limited top management support. Regulation in this sector was also found to be detrimental to supply chain resilience.