Opportunity

For multinational pharmaceutical company Hetero Labs Ltd, supply chain operations are a critical component of achieving its mission to make affordable medicines accessible to patients worldwide. The Hyderabad, India-based company’s global footprint, which spans 126 countries and 36 manufacturing facilities, necessitates a complex, focused approach to logistics. And for good reason. Healthcare supply chains face steep challenges in the areas of product traceability and data consistency that, if left unaddressed, can negatively impact health outcomes of patient populations.

Solution

GS1 standards and the Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN) were designed to help organizations like Hetero address health commodity identification and traceability, enabling reliable and timely exchange among healthcare suppliers like Hetero and their trading partners. Hetero turned to 1WorldSync, the world’s largest GDSN data pool and leading global product content platform, to allow it to provide data to a major customer, the USAID Global Health Supply Chain – Procurement and Supply Management (GHSC-PSM) project. “Through adoption of GS1 standards, we were able to share data that was complete, consistent and compliant with regulations. Additionally, the GDSN has resulted in significant time savings, which led to increased efficiency and visibility of our end-to-end supply chain, said Tarang Verma international marketing manager at Hetero. Through its participation, Hetero joined hundreds of other suppliers in this vital initiative. “Our partnership with 1WorldSync isn’t just about data pool services and the transmission of data back and forth; it’s a relationship around everything to do with the success of the GDSN. The level of community engagement they’ve provided has been really key, especially given that many of the organizations we work with are new to the GDSN at the beginning of this process, said Rachel Smith, global standards technical specialist for GHSC-PSM.

Results

This partnership led to:

• The ability to exchange timely, accurate pharmaceutical product information & enable UDI (Unique Device Identification)
• Increased traceability & reduced counterfeiting
• Access to localized implementation & education resources for easy adoption