Aided with observability, reliability, and predictability made possible by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and IBM Consulting, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) is able to get the right information into the right hands at the right time.
For on-the-ground workers handling and distributing components of pharmaceuticals and medical devices, even a seemingly small interruption in the supply chain—such as a printer driver outage or scanner failure—can create a ripple effect.
The processes of manufacturing and delivering is known as product flow. For J&J, which develops and sells medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and consumer packaged goods in more than 175 countries, precision of product 22 flow is required at every stage in delivery. The company knows that the infrastructure that runs behind the scenes and on the ground is essential to drug and device development and delivery. Because if you can’t scan products or goods in a warehouse, you can’t keep information moving. If you can’t print labels and invoices, you can’t ship packages. But finding the sources of these disruptions can be like the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack.
J&J sought a solution to provide critical insights into what is happening where in its supply chain and to help its team members conduct root cause analysis—meaning to find the outage and why it is happening.
Cloud technology solutions enable efficient traceability even in a complex network of tools across J&J’s critical business applications. For example, IBM identified a complex reporting query and leveraged various tools to aggregate relevant statistical data into a common data storage location. Artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) algorithms are used to trace, context-stitch, and present the results through a dynamic visualization. And all of this is done in a scalable manner within the production environment.
Now, J&J is aided with observability, reliability, and predictability made possible by AWS and IBM, enabling J&J to get the right information into the right hands at the right time and ensuring those hands can continue to manufacture and deliver products that make lives better.
