Bio Supply Management Alliance Launches Strategic Sourcing Industry Initiative

May 26, 2010 - PRLog -- The Bio Supply Management Alliance (BSMA), representing a worldwide community of supply chain management professionals in the biotechnology industry, has launched an industry initiative to meet the challenges of strategic sourcing in the emerging global market. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, home to more than 600 biotech firms, the BSMA has created a forum for collaboration, learning and best practice sharing of practitioners, executives and thought leaders.

“The executive and academic leaders of the biotech industry have launched a Steering Committee for Strategic Sourcing of products and services to serve as a foundation for the discussion of challenges, exchange of solutions, and implementation of advancements in the supply chain in an open and collaborative manner,” says Devendra Mishra, the Executive Director of BSMA and adjunct professor of Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business & Management.  “These executives are committed to fostering the mission of improving procurement of products and services from the global market where the biotech manufacturers are evolving from internally focused capabilities and competencies to developing supply partners who bring strategic value. The paramount objective is to enhance the efficacy of the end-to-end global supply chain by reducing the cost of manufacturing for higher quality patient care, reducing the cost and time of drug development, and mitigating the risk from end-to-end.”

Bill Coakley, chairman of the Strategic Sourcing Group observed, “We plan to use the wealth of experience within the group and members-at-large to solve shared problems and challenges, identify best practices, and undertake initiatives that would help remove redundancy for companies in the biopharmaceutical industry.  The Committee is off to a great start and is currently focusing on establishing ‘Best Practice’ to mitigate supply risk and Corporate Purchasing Policies. The information we plan to share will be extremely pertinent and useful to Sourcing and Supply Chain professionals in our industry.”

The Strategic Sourcing Steering Committee members are:

Chairman, Bill Coakley, Sr. Director, Supply Chain Management, SciClone Pharmaceuticals. He has been a key contributor in the Biopharmaceutical and Medical Diagnostics industries for over 25 years with experience in global supply chain management at Celera, Genzyme Corporation, Quest Diagnostics and Genetics Institute. As the former Co-founder of the Massachusetts Biotech Council’s (M.B.C.) Purchasing Committee, Bill helped establish the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) Purchasing Committee.

Mark Buck, the Global Supply Chain and Procurement Leader at Bio-Rad Inc., brings over 20 years of private and public sector experience in supply chain management & global sourcing, lean manufacturing & operations planning, Six Sigma quality process improvement, acquisition assimilation,  organizational change management and environmental leadership. This former marine has had leadership roles at NCR, Solectron, Asyst Technologies, Apple Computer, & Celerity Group Inc. Certified as a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Assessor, Quality Systems Review (QSR) assessor, Mark has ensured world-wide compliance with Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS), which was adopted by the European Union in 2006 to eliminate six environmentally hazardous materials from products and components. He has visited, and reviewed over 2500 manufacturing plants world-wide.

Wayne McDonnell, Research Director, AMR Research, Inc. brings 20 years of experience to his role as Research Director, Life Sciences and Healthcare value chain, including the pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device, wholesale, and hospital industries.  Wayne’s specific focus is on manufacturing, quality, and product supply management across these industries.  

Paul Anderson as the Vice President of Global Procurement at Life Technologies, created by the combination of Invitrogen Corporation and Applied Biosystems, has overall responsibility for leading a team of over 100 procurement professionals who manage over $1B annually of sourcing of direct and indirect production materials and services in support of customers, factories, R&D teams and employees.

Dale Dwier, the Manager of Procurement of Direct Materials at Bayer HealthCare pharmaceuticals, has over 25 years of Procurement experience in consumer goods, nutritionals, and Bio-Tech. He leads a team responsible for ensuring supply, risk mitigation, negotiations, supply agreements, and sourcing for all raw materials to support production in the Berkeley and Emeryville facilities. Previously Dale was Director of Purchasing at the former Leiner Health Products, a $2B nutritional company and with Tyco Toys and Mattel, the world’s leading toy company at $6Billion.

Jim Shuman, Sr. Vice President, Material Management, Genzyme Corporation, one of the world's leading biotechnology companies, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  Mr. Shuman joined Genzyme in 1996, and has played a key role in developing the company’s materials management organization. He was involved in establishing a global standard for the company’s enterprise resource planning system, which is used to run all of Genzyme’s manufacturing plants.  In his current role, he has global responsibility for the management of the purchasing, distribution, logistics, and planning functions for all of Genzyme’s business units. He oversees these functions in 10 manufacturing plants in the United States and Europe, and directs a staff of more than 150 people. He is also responsible for the Business Process Improvement (BPI) program across all of Genzyme’s manufacturing sites and functions.  Jim also serves on the Executive Advisory Board of the Grainger Center for Supply Chain Management.  He has a B.A. in economics from Buffalo State College.

Michael J. Mitchell is the Director, Global Supply Chain for SAFC Biosciences. In his 26 year career, he has successfully led conceptualization, development, implementation and management of multi-level global supply chains in regulated environments. Previously at Giorgio Foods he served as Director of International Operations, with accountabilities for global purchasing including international sourcing, joint venture management, materials management, inventory control, customer service, international and domestic logistics, production planning and information systems implementations.

James E. (Jim) Latimer, Director, Purchasing & Supply Management, Gilead Sciences, supports operations at Foster City, Seattle, Palo Alto, and Westminster, CO sites. Founder of the world-wide Gilead Purchasing & Supply Management Council (PSMC), James has established over 100 supplier price agreements to foster strategic supplier relationships. His contributions have ranged from achieving significant savings in the areas of Manufacturing, Facilities, Marketing, IT and HR to implementing ERP systems, Procure to Pay solutions, internet buying processes and purchasing card (p-card) program. Jim has served on the National Association of Purchasing Management (NAPM) Pharmaceutical Forum Board of Directors, member of VWR International’s Customer Advisory Board, and Director of the Institute for Supply Management (Silicon Valley).

Marc Lampron, as a member of Genentech’s Procurement Senior Leadership Team, supports company’s South San Francisco headquarters and main manufacturing sites of Vacaville (CA), Oceanside (CA), Hillsboro (OR) and Genentech’s new Singapore facilities. Marc is engaged in extensive collaboration with the counterparts at the Roche US Sites and the Roche EU global sourcing teams to leverage combined spend and jointly manage common global Suppliers. Formerly, Marc was employed as Amgen’s Executive Director – Strategic Sourcing (Facilities and Capital) and had increasing responsibilities at Merck & Co.

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About the Bio Supply Management Alliance

The Bio Supply Management Alliance was born of the need to create a worldwide community of operations and supply chain management leaders and professionals in the biotechnology industry. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, home to more than 600 biotech firms, the Alliance provides a forum for collaboration, learning and best practice sharing of practitioners, executives and thought leaders in these uniquely demanding industry sectors. Founders Tim Salaver and Devendra Mishra have forged relationships with key industry leaders and defined initiatives with a vision to create process, people, and policy improvements in this vital sector. Because life depends on us, the Bio Supply Management Alliance supports B2B networking, continuous learning and career improvement of bio supply management professionals. For more information, go to http://www.biosupplyalliance.org.