Life sciences
Challenges in today’s life sciences industry
Around the “one demand” campfire
Many life sciences companies have multiple versions of demand depending on the audience (finance, commercial, supply chain). These versions have their own rights of existence, but surely, they can be merged into one for use by commercial, finance, supply chain.
Advanced therapies are emerging
Innovative solutions for new therapies are emerging rapidly, which require new approaches to deliver such therapies to the customer (e.g. setup of vein-to-vein value chains). Building and introducing such new ‘runways’ in parallel to managing the lifecycle of the existing portfolio will continue to be a big challenge.
Digitization across the value chain & back
More and more life sciences companies are seeking to increase their horizontal and vertical collaboration both with suppliers and their CMO’s. Time to keep your digital roadmap aligned & connected across the value chain.
Network planning orchestration is key
Life sciences companies have complex supply chain flows consisting of multiple stages performed at different sites. Orchestration across that network is critical to ensure the product is available at the right time.
Inefficient scattering of master data
In the past 5 years, a lot of mergers & acquisitions in life sciences companies took place. They result in inefficient system integrations but are also a source of a very scattered master data tooling landscape. In addition, while the importance of master data is recognized from an R&D perspective, master data stewardship roles are not yet embedded in SC/Make/Quality.
Regulatory requirements are more demanding than ever
Besides, the companies that will thrive are the ones that can move beyond the ‘compliance’ and leverage capabilities that they have built and primarily invested in (such as serialization) to turn them into a competitive advantage
Services we have in-house to tackle those challenges

Planning transformation
We help you to build the digital supply chain of the future. We provide a unique and holistic set of capabilities for leveraging system and process design expertise, change management, advanced data methods, and strong implementation skills. We have an end-to-end mindset, with key capabilities in areas from demand planning and supply planning to production planning and distribution planning.
Organizational change
Based on best-in-class studies, clear and aligned ‘as is’ time-spent overviews, the maturity, and complexity of your company, we look into the possible organizational models and work out an ambitious yet realistic business case that supports your business strategy. We help to design your organization in terms of roles, reducing handovers, and maximizing efficiency. In that way, you get a clear view of the organizational structures, management layers, and spans of control, responsibilities, talent profiles, and decision-making governance.
Business transformation
We support you in rethinking your organizational structure and processes to help shape your business of tomorrow. We start with the real driving force of change within your organization: your people. We use our own transformation methodology, MOUNTK, to make the intangible nature of change tangible.
Plant effectiveness
Production plant effectiveness is crucial. However, throughput struggles are still a reality today. Are too many influencing factors making your plant unreliable and ineffective? Let us help you in discovering how to shift in focus to grow in reliability and effectiveness without saying goodbye to flexibility. In other words, how to start planning and reserve capacity for uncertainties and, in the end, regain control!
Integration distribution network
From a network optimization perspective, we can give you the visibility you need across your entire distribution network. Using our in-house LOP.ai modeling tool, we create an auto build and detailed virtual twin that forms the basis of your network design study or optimization (NDS/NDO).
From a distribution optimization perspective, we help you get the most out of your distribution network, using predictive logistics to focus on every relevant detail: from quality and productivity to supplier integration and more. And we stay focused on the bigger picture of your corporate strategy, communication and organizational setup.

Digital transformation
We support you in creating and developing your digital roadmap to gear up for the future. We recognize that the digital roadmap is an overarching strategy, and the bluecrux methods will connect the dots across departments to ensure the various digital initiatives are aligned. We support you in different digital transformation journeys in specific supply chain and operations domains:
- Digital supply chain planning (e.g., APS implementations, digital twin,etc.)
- Digital factory (e.g., smart factory and industry 4.0 concept implementations)
- Digital warehousing (e.g., Industry 4.0 and automation concepts for warehouse)
- Digital connected enterprise (e.g., shifting to next-generation ERPs)
Master data
We install a broad framework to support and reinforce your core planning processes: one that takes your people, processes, governance, tools, data quality, business context, and business rules into account.
This holistic approach yields multiple cross-departmental benefits, from increased organizational efficiencies to reduced pressure on working capital and enhanced service levels.

“Getting on top of your recipes is fundamental in building your data factory. Master complexity on how bio drug substance recipes are to be set up from preculture to downstream processing in such a way they are used cross make, finance & supply chain.”
Cedric Van Helleputte, Head of Planning – Life Sciences