Movilitas.Cloud Enables Supply Chain Visibility at A.forall

Movilitas.Cloud is a next-generation Software-as-a-Service cloud-based software developed by Engineering Industries eXcellence. Movilitas.Cloud helps industrial enterprises digitally serialize, track and trace their products worldwide and across their supply chain networks while ensuring compliance with regulations and industry-specific standards. In this video, we speak with Juan Chia, Chief Information Officer for our customer A.forall, a global pharmaceuticals leader dedicated to making affordable medicines available to all. Learn how A.forall joined forces with our Movilitas.Cloud team to ensure regulatory compliance with the European Union's Falsified Medicines Directive.

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Full Video Transcript

I'm Juan Chia, the Chief Information Officer for the Alter Pharma Group. I'm responsible for all the IT systems, both regulated and not regulated and, in particular, all the systems supporting the serialization processes. Alter Pharma's mission is to make affordable medicines available to all. And we do it in two different ways. We have a pharmacy house business and we also have a generics business. The pharmacy house business is the combination of parallel import and drug shortages medicines that we provide to the market here in the Benelux. We work with pharmacies both in retail and the hospitals. And thanks to us, we have been able to provide just in 2022 over 600,000 treatments for patients that otherwise wouldn't have received it. Our second business is generics. We develop and launch medicines with partners all over the world. And we ensure that those medicines are on a need basis, meaning that we're always looking for the medicines that are going to help the most.

Engineering Industries eXcellence's team has been with us for the last four years. We first engaged with them in 2018 when we were getting ready for the European legislation that was coming up to do with the falsifying medicines directive. This legislation was activated on the 9th of February 2019 and we had to move quickly with regards to changing our operations to be compliant with the legislation. So their team was there for us at the beginning when everything was new for us.

So when the Movilitas.Cloud system was presented to us as part of the compliance program, it basically fitted perfectly with our needs. And since, well, the 9th of February 2019, we've been compliant on serializations. That was very, very good on their side. Also, the evolution of the system has worked with us as well because in 2022, we applied the Movilitas.Cloud platform to our generics processes as well for serialization. And it means that the evolution that we had seen on the European Legislation through the European Medicines Verification Organization, the EMVO, where we all in Europe had to be compliant with, has been supported by the Movilitas evolution. So that's, I would call it a nice four years of hand-in-hand work together.

I think that the nice thing about Alter Pharma is that we got early involved with them and they actually fulfill a specific role within Europe. Because in Europe we have the free trade, which allows companies to buy products in one country, repack them, sell them and that way they can actually solve issues like shortages of medicines. And the interesting thing is actually that this is a process that got more complicated because of the FMD regulation. Because products are serialized, if you repack them, they become a different product. And, of course, then you need to be able to tell that this product is no longer on the market. This is the new product that is on the market. And you like to have a link between the product that you bought versus the product that you sell. And that is actually what was very nice. Alter Pharma also allowed us to look at a complete manual process, semi-automated and completely automated. And together we were able to build a solution that is standard, is used also by other companies in Europe.

And we're still evolving together with them to make it better and better. The system has allowed us to move from manual processes into automatic processes. We did get quite a lot of benefits in the cooperation with the Engineering Industries eXcellence team and the Movilitas.Cloud software. It's a very easy to use software. The interface is browser based. We can access it from anywhere. We have the capacity to manage the users. We have the functions also, a granular label that can be applied to the operators so we know what's going on. And we have controls over the things that in the past we did manually, now it's done automatically, meaning that there's been an increase in efficiency and a reduction on errors because the system is managing the processes that before we didn't have a central location for. The system also comes with a very talented group of people. It means that we have the trust and I guess the capacity to call into a group that will allow us to either support technically when something happens and also to give us a bit of evolution where we're trying to do new things. So we have functionality we're trying to figure out. For example, I mentioned when we have a new partner we need to connect to. So is that sort of, well, how do we do this? What options do we have? What sort of questions we need to ask? So that gives us a pretty much support team that's almost like an in-house resource because they know us so much that when we come back with new questions, they already know what we're looking for. That closeness is very important for us. And then finally the system itself gives us a lot of visibility with what's going on. We have people in different countries, warehouses here in the Benelux or other parts of Europe that are doing things for us and the only thing for us to be able to see is when they scan that we get the data into the mobility system. So that kind of control and visibility is something that allows us to move faster and with more, I'll say, trust on the data that we're going to be handling to the European hub. But also to the requirements of the European regulations because they are always evolving and we need to adapt with it. We're very good, strong supporters of the European Medicines Verification Organization, the EMVO. We are engaged with them. We need to be aware of what's happening and how the industry is evolving.

And not only that because then the team has a lot of knowledge on technical systems evolution. It's also their knowledge about the actual regulations because I'm not always aware of everything and they are always coming up with, "Okay, do you know that we could do this, or do you know this is coming?" So we always try to be ahead of the curve. That's something we can do with the Movilitas.Cloud team.

The channels is where the company software allows us to get things running. But we also have the modules that we use in our operations. So we have the manufacturer for pharma. That module is capable of giving us the visibility on the serial numbers that are created. Where are those serial numbers? We also have GTIN codes. We also have the SSCCs, which is the serial shipping container codes. It's basically the codes that are used for shipping. When you get thousands of packs that need to be shipped from the manufacturer firm, they will be put into pallets and each pallet will have been given a number. So that SSCC code facilitates the control and the tracking of the packs from the manufacturing site to the distribution site. And that's also something that the Movitas system will show us if it's available. And then finally, the repacker FMD is a tool that is used mostly by the warehouse. So while we have QA operations or supply chain operations, it's using the manufacturer for pharma on their laptop on the browser. The repackers, they have scanners and they need to be able to send information to us somehow. So the repacker FMD through the Movitas desktop application allows them to scan, look at the orders, scan the serial numbers. They can be able to decommission also those serial numbers through the channel to the EMVO. So if we receive a pack, they can scan that pack and automatically the system can decommission it from the EMVS system. And then it all becomes part of a unit because we have different people for different purposes handling the connection of the systems, the information, visibility and the day-to-day operations. So we know what's happening in the warehouse because we can read it on the cloud system.

The serialized logistics module, similar to the repacker before, is the new evolution that is used by the warehouse teams where they can actually, again, with a scanner, in this case using any smartphone device or scanner, you can use the Movilitas mobile app, which then allows them to connect to the orders that we have in the system so they can actually identify what to scan that will match the order. The information they scan goes straight into the serialized manufacturing so we can actually then see what's happening in the warehouse. Oh, they scan, we have the information. And then in the serialized manufacturing, then the QA team can do the quality checks. And the most important thing is that if aggregation is used, if the SSCC's numbers are used for the shipping of the packs to the warehouse, that aggregation allows us to much faster have full visibility of every serial number received, meaning that when the system is QA compliant and we're ready to commission the serial numbers with a couple of clicks, you can send thousands of products and serial numbers to the European database. And that's made our job fast and easy.

At Alter Pharma, we are always looking for high quality on everything we do, from our products, but also to partners and our systems. So the Movilitas.Cloud system has been able to give us that sort of automation on things that are very important that are related to the safety of products that we put in the market and is allowing us to move from manual processes to automatic processes in a way that we can be compliant for the FMD regulations. Not because we have to, but because we like to be ahead with regards to our requirements in the industry.

Finally, the very good business driver for us is the growth and the partnership. To grow, you have to use partners. The partners are in many different levels of maturity, different sizes, different countries. And to be able to adapt with each one of those partners, we need someone that can help us through the hurdles, especially technical challenge or processes that we experience with each one of those partners.
We have achieved reliability on a day-to-day basis that we always look at having from the beginning. That reliability has shown us that new needs can be tackled quickly. And then we have the capacity to engage with our current and new partners in different ways to make us grow faster, in this case, always within a compliance framework. We cannot afford to slow down when we have new partners or technologies that are not exactly in line with what we expect to work. And the good part of having the Movilitas.Cloud system and the Movilitas.Cloud team is the fact that we can have solutions to tackle those problems or deviations. And in essence, Movilitas saves the day.