Material convergence issue in the pharmaceutical supply chain during a disease outbreak
The International Journal of Logistics Management
ISSN: 0957-4093
Article publication date: 9 November 2021
Issue publication date: 9 August 2022
Abstract
Purpose
Pharmaceutical donations are a practical approach to increase medicine availability during disasters such as disease outbreaks. However, often donated pharmaceuticals are inappropriate and unsuitable. This convergence of inappropriate pharmaceuticals is a severe operational challenge and results in environmental hazards. This study explores the pharmaceutical supply chains (PSCs) during a disease outbreak to relieve the negative impact of the material convergence problem (MCP).
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopts a situation-actors-process learning-action-performance (SAP-LAP) linkage framework to understand the PSC dynamics. The problem-solving component of the SAP-LAP analysis provides the strategies catering to MCP. The findings from the SAP-LAP helped to develop the causal loop diagram (CLD). This study conducts several experiments on the proposed strategies by integrating CLD into a stock and flow diagram. Later, a disease outbreak case study accessed the pharmaceutical donations effect on PSC performance.
Findings
The study synthesises and evaluates propositions and strategies to incorporate circular economy (CE) principles in PSC. This study proposed two strategies; one to sort and supply and the other to sort, supply and resell. The reuse policy improves humanitarian organisations' finances in the simulation study. This study verified the operational improvement of PSC by reducing the transport and storage burden due to MCP.
Originality/value
This study comprehensively approaches the issue of drug donation and uniquely produced several propositions for incorporating a CE perspective in PSC. The study also proposed a unique simulation approach to model the donation arrivals in response to a disease outbreak using susceptible, exposed, infectious and recovered modelling.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This paper forms part of a special section “Operational excellence in the supply chain of perishables at the time of the outbreak”, guest edited by Sachin Kumar Mangla, Gunjan Soni, Michael Bourlakis and Vikas Kumar.
Citation
Patil, A., Madaan, J., Shardeo, V., Charan, P. and Dwivedi, A. (2022), "Material convergence issue in the pharmaceutical supply chain during a disease outbreak", The International Journal of Logistics Management, Vol. 33 No. 3, pp. 955-996. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLM-11-2020-0425
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited