Managing Uncertainty in Pharmaceutical Supply Chains: A Structured Review

Abstract

In past decades, pharmaceutical supply chains (PSC) have become increasingly fragmented and complex making them more susceptible to supply chain (SC) risks. This has manifested in a growing number of drug shortages around the world which presents a great challenge to many national healthcare systems. PSC models provide crucial decision support and can facilitate efforts to avoid or manage such stockout situations more effectively. In this paper, we review the scientific literature on quantitative PSC models considering uncertainty in the context of drug shortages. We conduct a systematic search to obtain an overview of the current state of research in this field. The identified papers are analyzed with regards to pivotal modeling choices and their characterization of uncertainty. Our results show that many models make assumptions or abstractions which do not accurately reflect the current business environment of the pharmaceutical sector. Thus, we deduce future research avenues which might lead the way to more responsive and resilient PSCs.