Many things can go wrong at any given step in the supply chain of a biological product—from the raw materials or components coming from far-off places, to the transportation, warehousing, or logistics. But it is challenging to assess the many risks inherent in biomanufacturing due to the complexity of these supply chains, the potential for unforeseen disruptions, and the evolving regulatory landscape.
A team of researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology has developed a new digital tool that will help bio-based businesses—companies that produce pharmaceuticals, food ingredients, or industrial materials—to stress test their supply chains. The tool, which doesn’t yet have a name, offers an affordable way to assess risks and evaluate scenarios to avoid or minimize potential disruptions.
The objective of the new tool is to provide data that businesses can use to improve their competitiveness, reduce costs, and make their supply chain more efficient and resilient from various shocks and disruptions that can occur, explained Chip White, PhD, professor of industrial and systems engineering at Georgia Tech and who helped lead the project.
The Georgia Tech tool can be customized to evaluate the potential impact of various disruptions, such as pandemics, natural disasters, policy changes, or cyberattacks. In the event of such an upset in the supply chain, White said the tool can help a company decide how to respond and recover from it. This may include reconfiguring a supply chain or manufacturing processes, or even changing the design of a product, he said.
Three major parts
The digital tool has three major parts, explained Kan Wang, PhD, a senior research engineer at Georgia Tech, who co-led the project. The first part is the supply chain, where users can input every aspect of their company’s supply chain. The second part is an event generator, in which they’ve already programmed a library of disruptions, such as a labor strike or a geopolitical event, and input the probabilities of such events. The third part is the metrics.
“After the simulation, we collect every asset, every parameter from the model, and then you can do all kinds of statistical analyses with those data, and it can show you different graphs,” Wang said.
As an example, White noted that you could run a scenario in which a company is concerned about losing a supplier and wants to know how much extra inventory it should stock, just in case.
“What we can do are a series of ‘what ifs’ on that, let the inventory go up to a certain level, see what the impact is in terms of being able to supply, provide, satisfy customer service levels, and then see how much it costs,” White explained. Based on the data, it can help a company decide how to proceed.
Another benefit of the tool is that it can help companies meet certain U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requirements for addressing risk. White said that within the platform “you see a chart of possible events and the probability they’ll occur, and the consequences.”
But it’s still not always easy to predict what could happen or determine the probability of what might happen, White conceded, for example, if there’s a strike at a foreign factory that provides a key element of a product. But because it’s a key element of a product, companies should be thinking about what they would do if it became unavailable, he said. For parts of the supply chain that are more easily replaced, there’s less action a company might need to take.
Several companies have already adopted the new tool. “A major food company recently embedded parts of our simulation framework directly into their supply chain management system. They’ve successfully utilized these functions to streamline their operations,” White said. But it’s not fully commercialized yet—so far it’s limited to companies the Georgia Tech team partnered with for past and ongoing research projects.
Bolstering the U.S. bioeconomy
Beyond helping companies by providing insights into risks, costs, productivity, and other performance metrics, the greater goal of the platform is to bolster the U.S. bioeconomy, reshore the production of sustainable materials, and strengthen national security. “It’s public health, food, pharma, (and) energy, and that all has economic and national security implications,” White said.
The work was funded by BioMADE, a Manufacturing Innovation Institute sponsored by the Department of Defense (DoD). Melanie Tomczak, PhD, head of programs and CTO at BioMADE Georgia Tech, explained that the DoD is interested in this work in order to secure our national supply chain. In securing the biomanufacturing supply chain, the United States can reduce reliance on foreign sources, enable rapid response to crises, protect against emerging threats, and promote economic growth, Tomczak said.
“The more we can make at home, the more secure we are as a nation,” she stated. “The tool that Georgia Tech has developed is really a great way for companies to understand where the pain points are in their supply chain.” It can also help if there’s a crisis that disrupts their supply.
“If more companies can adopt a tool such as the one that Georgia Tech has developed, they keep those supply chains moving and then keep the products on the shelves for our consumers,” Tomczak added.
Ultimately, White said, the beneficiary of the new tool is the customer. By creating a more sustainable and competitive bioeconomy, customers will get dependable, competitively priced products that are on the shelves when they need them.