Over my 31 year consulting career I have worked in practically every supply chain based industry sector and in more than 70 countries. One of the sectors that has been a significant adopter of S&OP/IBP and have seen fit to seek my support has been the Medical and Pharmaceutical industries. I have had the privilege to work with many companies from this sector such as GSK, Wyeth, Zimmer, Stryker, Smiths medical, Hospira, Smith & Nephew, Nordic Pharma and Abbott.

My work with Abbott was at the time with Abbott Inc which included Pharma and Nutritional subsequently this led to support of Abbott Vascular, Diabetes and Ross Nutritional. The original Abbott Inc programme was a global rollout of S&OP and Planning & Control processes across more than 80 countries globally. It was here that I worked with one of the most outstanding Supply Chain Change Management leaders that I have ever had the privilege to work with. Damian Halloran completely understood that transformation is completely dependent upon leadership and education. In fact I still remember his answer to the question of ‘what was the secret to success?’ which was “leadership, leadership, leadership and education, education, education”.

Of course ultimately success is judged by results and the results of the Abbott programme were certainly very significant and impressive. The overall headline improvements were a reduction in global inventory (DOH) of 15-20 days, customer service in all countries (affiliates) of 95%+ which was an improvement from an average of less than 90%. Most impressively incremental sales attributed to a more effective and integrated supply chain of $100 million + and an overall return from the transformation programmes of $200 million+.

Dave Manning

DM Integration

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