SDCExec.com |

Orlando, FL — June 13, 2008 — Axway, Blue Vector and Gebhardt this week announced an alliance to provide a solution for a secure and efficient prescription drug supply chain.

Organizations in the alliance each contribute their respective expertise, including drug pedigree, track-and-trace, edge process management, intelligent logistics solution, and implementation. This alliance is part of the global serialization track-and-trace initiative to enable new business value across the supply chain that Axway established in April 2008.

According to the providers, reducing latency in the pharmaceutical supply chain by avoiding rework due to problem shipments, on-time delivery and reducing out-of-stock situations because of incorrect deliveries is a common goal across the industry. The serialization initiatives that companies are embarking on are critical for regulatory compliance, supporting key business requirements and offering opportunities to expose new business value. Axway, Blue Vector and Gebhardt said they are providing an end-to-end solution, enabling value-added operational efficiencies for both non-serialized and serialized supply chain operations.

An example is at a shipping dock where containers are loaded onto trailers. By using Gebhardt logistics solutions, totes are loaded on reusable radio frequency identification (RFID)-enabled dollies for easy loading and offloading from trailers.

The dollies and their totes are linked to the shipment manifest route and sequence information which is cached on a Blue Vector shipping portal located at the dock door. As the dolly passes through the portal, loading errors are detected and corrected via instructional output to an operator through an operator device or other displays.

These events managed between Blue Vector's intelligent Edge and Axway's Track & Trace solution can also be used to trigger other activities to occur. For example, a "shipment complete" event could trigger Pedigree creation (the point where it is likely to be most accurate), notification to store (ASN), customer invoice or automatic billing to store cost center.

"Today's global economy is forcing organizations to take proactive steps to maintain the integrity and security of their products while assuring the accuracy of their shipments as they move from point of manufacture to end consumer." said Romen Kuloor, vice president, Business Development, BlueVector. "By extending business intelligence to the operational edge, and enabling real-time data to operators, this collaborative solution will provide supply chain data where and when it is needed. This allows companies to realize value from their serialization investments today while preparing for Pedigree and other regulatory compliance tomorrow."