Postponement Model Expedites COVID Test Kits into Retail Supply Chain | Life Sciences
6/22/2022 RRD
Diagnostic start-up turns to RRD as their single-source supply chain partner.
CHALLENGE
A manufacturer of digitally-enabled diagnostic healthcare products received its emergency use authorization (EUA) from the FDA for its COVID-19 home test. As one of the first over-the-counter, fully at-home diagnostic tests (in late 2020), this company received a significant U.S. government contract. The contract required a packaging, kitting, and fulfillment partner in the U.S. that could help manage the test kit producer’s entire U.S. supply chain.
With no manufacturing presence in the U.S., however, delivering 100K tests a month to support domestic COVID-19 testing would prove to be a challenge. According to original forecasts, this number was expected to rise dramatically to tens of millions of tests per month by December 2021.
This innovative start-up needed a single point of contact and control in the U.S. market to ensure full supply chain management and execution compliance.
SOLUTION
RRD’s ability to scale at multiple levels gave reason to the client to select RRD as their single-source U.S. supply chain partner. To help increase their retail distribution channel, RRD leveraged its entire breadth of services to create a customized supply chain solution:
- Packaging design and production
- Label design and production
- Supply chain management (e.g., kitting, fulfillment, distribution, and warehousing)
- Commercial printing (all-in-box literature)
- In-store marketing
- Market insight and intelligence
By deploying a postponement model of supply chain management, the client was able to ship all components and have RRD navigate FDA approvals and compliance adherence.
RESULTS
By using an outsourced model to manage their U.S. supply chain, the client was able to expedite product supply into the retail and government channels They were also able to keep the overall operating expense across the entire supply chain aligned with their budget.