Since 2016 all pharmaceutical companies have implemented solutions to support Serialisation requirements from different markets. I have been involved in implementations at 3 different clients.
The question i receive most often is how to transition from a successful implementation to a more stable operation of SAP ATTP, without keeping the project team around indefinitely.
I have come to the conclusion that the only way to do this is by implementing one ao another form of DevOps. In the following i will explain why i think this is the case.
Serialisation as a business area
Serialisation covers most of the Pharmaceutical value chain, from a material is filed (created) until finished good production, through the warehouse, to the 3PL and finally at the Pharmacy, all these can and will be impacted from a support process.
Materials missing key date elements might cause issues at the 3PL, and the person receiving the request for support will need to know this might be serialisation relevant, just to log any incident correctly.
Example
Project is ongoing implementing changes necessary for Indonesia/Brazil/Saudi Regulation. Change IT application at 3PL necessitates change to interface.
Huge turfwar ensures, as Project does not have time or budget to fix this. Line of business have batches blocked at 3PL, risking an out of stock situation.
After endless escalations, someone sufficiently high in the organisation prioritizes and the changes can be implemented. This is not planned and QA see potential risk in these unplanned changes, and requires mitigation strategy of the development.
After xx weeks, changes have been implemented and everybody feels miserable.
Why DevOps
Devops is a mindset established to ensure coherence between Development and operations. It defines and ensures coorporation between all the parties needed to Plan, test and execute changes in the system.
This means that operation is allready part of the planned work. It will catch no one by surprise when changes needs to be implemented, and the supporting functions, have allready been part of defining the proces.
Feel free to contact us us if you would like to discuss your challenges.