“The automotive industry was once in a similar setup to big pharma players, but they evolved through closer supplier collaboration and continuous improvement practices,” says Fabrice Le Garrec, drawing parallels between today’s pharmaceutical manufacturing challenges and the automotive industry’s transformation. “Toyota’s model of developing suppliers as an extension of your company is something pharma isn’t doing enough of.”
Fabrice Le Garrec brings extensive pharmaceutical operations experience as former VP of Global Operations at Teva and GSK, and ex-McKinsey consultant. Through OSCIS Network, he now leads a network of over 100 pharmaceutical professionals providing performance transformation services across North America and Europe.
In the latest episode of the PharmaSource podcast, Fabrice shares crucial insights about how pharmaceutical manufacturers can transform their operations by adopting Toyota’s proven approaches to supplier integration, continuous improvement, and operational excellence, including lessons learned during the COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing ramp-up.
Don’t miss Fabrice’s talk at CDMO Live 2025: 10 things I’d do differently if leading new fast-track pandemic drug launch again. Download the agenda here
Early Supplier Integration: The Missing Link in Pharma Development
Toyota’s revolutionary approach to supplier involvement offers a blueprint for pharmaceutical manufacturing transformation. “Toyota was the first company ever that started to design new cars by inviting their suppliers to their own development teams right from the beginning,” Fabrice explains. This early integration ensures optimal product design that considers supplier capabilities from the start.
Current pharma practice often creates costly inefficiencies. “Many times, the pharma company has developed a product using their own equipment. They come to the CDMO and it’s a different set of equipment, and you have to redo all over again. It’s complex. It costs a lot of money.”
Building a Culture of Continuous Improvement
Toyota’s success demonstrates the power of embedding continuous improvement into organisational structure. “Toyota’s supervisor-to-worker ratio is one to six or seven, compared to one to fifteen or twenty in pharma,” Fabrice notes. “They do this because they want supervisors to have time to drive continuous improvement every day.”
This commitment extends to leadership development. “You cannot become a director or VP at Toyota without growing through the ranks. They only promote people who can maintain and sustain this culture, who can teach it as well.”
Transforming Supplier Relationships
The most significant opportunity for pharma lies in revolutionising supplier relationships. “Toyota invests free consulting time with their best experts at their supplier base, going there days and days every year to help them raise their game for the benefit of the whole value chain,” Fabrice emphasises.
This collaborative approach stands in stark contrast to current pharma-CDMO relationships. “The amount of collaboration between CDMOs and Big Pharma is not as good as it could be to really reduce costs. The sharing of risk has to be better, the transparency has to be better.”
COVID-19: Proving Ground for New Manufacturing Approaches
The pandemic response demonstrated the potential for transformation. During the Lonza-Moderna vaccine manufacturing ramp-up, Fabrice witnessed unprecedented collaboration. “The complete alignment of governance, health authorities, vaccines manufacturing companies, and suppliers was extraordinary. When everybody’s going for speed and understands this is critical, it’s amazing how decisions are made much more quickly.”
COVID-19 introduced new project management approaches that should become industry standard. “For the first time in pharma, functions were told what to do by the PMO, and the PMO’s only goal was to protect the timeline, because timeline meant lives,” Fabrice recalls.
A key innovation was implementing a single source of truth for project tracking. “Having one system, one major connected timing plan, where all functions feed into – at any time, you see the only source of truth, the latest timing, the latest risk.”
Future Outlook
Industry pressures are driving the need for transformation. “The pressure on cost, fewer blockbusters, and mounting challenges are pushing us towards closer integration between pharma companies and their CDMOs,” Fabrice predicts. “Long-term partnerships will become essential.”
The COVID-19 experience proves transformation is possible. “There are ways to simplify, to make processes faster while maintaining quality. We proved it during COVID-19 – now we need to maintain that momentum.”
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