Leverage tech to anticipate supply issues.

Sebastien Bals, UCB CPO, recently discussed how his team responded to the ongoing polycrisis with Chief Product Officer, David Rae. Bals explained that when the pandemic hit, they quickly realized the dependency they had on their supply chain. As a result, they initiated the process of creating a digital twin of their supply chain to better understand where they were buying from and how product flows were going. The technology embedded AI and machine learning to provide them with proactive insights on potential vulnerabilities.

UCB’s purchasing team is evaluating supplier financial risks and monitoring climate risk or potential disruptions that are happening by country, region, or company. According to Bals, speed is crucial in responding to these types of situations. Therefore, having insight into what is going on allows them to make the right judgment. However, the biggest challenge remains going deep into your supply chain.

UCB has a categorization process beyond whether a supplier is strategic or not. They look at how switchable the products they are buying from the supplier are. This process has allowed them to become more proactive in anticipating potential changes through the sourcing governance committee. Furthermore, UCB qualifies potential suppliers ahead of time, so their environment can be more dynamic.

For example, UCB is currently monitoring the dependency on China or Asia overall. They have already started learning about the potential alternatives and qualifying potential suppliers ahead of time. They saw that even though they might seem dual-sourced on certain materials, those suppliers were buying from the same sub-suppliers.

UCB is having more active conversations within the organization and even talking to their development folks to see how they can embed risk management and sustainability in the development of their products.

UCB has created a Supply Resilience and Agility Program for their inventories and their needs in production, planning, and sales planning. They have a more end-to-end view and understand how that translates from a risk perspective rather than a production point of view. Understanding potential trade-offs allows them to redesign their supply chain.