Roche partners with Wazoku to overhaul pharma inventory management

Multinational pharmaceutical company Roche has launched a crowdsourcing campaign to overhaul pharmaceutical inventory management and supply tracking by deploying more innovative automated methods.

Roche is partnering with innovation scale-up Wazoku on the challenge - Novel and Improved Approaches to Automated Inventory Management. It is seeking ideas from Wazoku’s 700,000+ crowd of experts that dramatically reduce the amount of time end users spend on managing their supplies. The desired tracking system should be fully automated, with just a few operators needed to control it at the central storage facility.

“The need to more effectively track supplies at R&D facilities in large pharma companies is huge, and it's important to overcome inefficiencies in companies’ inventory management,” said Jack Sanderson, Account Director, Wazoku. “Our Wazoku Crowd has a fantastic track record in finding solutions to similar Challenges, and I'm confident it will deliver something transformative for Roche.”

Inventory management can be highly complex and covers different supply phases — ordering, delivery, storage, and usage. It has become so important for pharma firms that many new research facility buildings are now constructed with embedded automation systems of the supply chain. Yet introducing such advanced systems in existing buildings is complicated due to the potentially massive and costly infrastructure changes required.

“The goal of inventory management is to have the right amounts of materials in the right place at the right time, which is crucial in modern R&D,” said a spokesperson for Roche. “Even the automated systems currently in use require extensive human input, making them susceptible to errors. We know that there is vast knowledge and experience in such areas within the Wazoku Crowd, and we are looking forward to seeing what innovative automated solutions emerge.”

Performing inventory management requires large companies' R&D departments to track multiple items along their supply chain closely. This can deliver significant savings in areas such as tail spend management, storage management, and waste management.

The ideal tracking system will track ordered supplies and diverse material types from the point they enter the central storage facility to their utilisation by end users in individual units. The system should operate at R&D labs of various sizes, starting with 100 m², and should be ‘plug-in’ in terms of integration with existing systems.

“The power of the crowd to find solutions to business issues is without parallel,” said Simon Hill, CEO, Wazoku. “Inventory management is a critical part of the R&D process, with potentially massive savings if it can be effectively automated. Roche is an organisation that’s very aware of the value of innovation and that collaboration and crowdsourcing are the most effective ways to innovate and realise benefits.”

The Wazoku Crowd is a 700,000-strong network of expert problem ‘solvers’, comprised of scientists, pharmacists, engineers, PhD students, CEOs, start-ups, and business leaders. It has a success rate of 80%+ in solving more than 2,500 challenges.

The prizes for Novel and Improved Approaches to Automated Inventory Management will be determined after Roche evaluates the proposals. Roche guarantees a $15,000 award for solutions, with at least one award no smaller than $5,000, and those providing details of innovative start-ups and experts could win up to $500 for their network referrals. The challenge closes on 18 June 2024.