Post by Stephan Fath

The pharma supply chain has grown more complex than the tools designed to manage it. Over the past decade, active CDMO facilities have grown from around 500 to over 1,250. Most large pharmaceutical companies today manage between 100 and 200 active CDMO partnerships. Key decisions around capacity allocation, risk escalation, and partner prioritization still depend largely on manual reporting and limited real time visibility. AI is now changing this equation materially. The efficiency gains are significant: a 40 to 60% reduction in oversight effort, a 5 to 12% reduction in addressable COGS spend, and the ability to move from months to days on strategic network decisions. What strikes me most is not the operational gain alone. It is what real time intelligence means for control. For the first time, pharma companies can lead the conversation around supply risk rather than react to it. That shift in posture matters as much as the numbers. #RolandBerger #pharma #CDMO #network #supplychain #AI #ESO #TechOps #externalmanufacturing Thilo Kaltenbach Morris Hosseini Marco Bühren Matthias Bünte Filip Conic Michael Baur Peter Odenwälder Bernhard Langefeld Julien Gautier Nicolas Dumas Hans Nyctelius