An Analytic Network Process model to support decision making in a pharmaceutical supply chain

Abstract

This paper intends to design an Analytic Network Process model to assists managers of different pharmaceutical supply chain entities in identifying and prioritize the management practices they use or should use to achieve a competitive position in the market. The model involves interactions between various criteria for management practice selection. To this purpose a set of clusters and elements related to a Portuguese pharmaceutical supply chain are identified to compose the model and pairwise compared with respect to a given factor. The results obtained from the proposed model show that the most suitable management practice for the pharmaceutical supply chain studied is “Just In Time” if the lean supply chain management paradigm was implemented and “Promoting visibility throughout the supply chain” if was the agile paradigm. Concerning the key performance measures, “On-Time-In-Full delivery” and “Inventory value” are selected respectively for lean and agile supply chain management.