Johnson & Johnson and Microsoft are Working to Combat Global Supply Chain Disruptions

As the largest and most broadly based healthcare company in the world, Johnson & Johnson manufactures consumer health products, pharmaceuticals and medical devices in state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities and has been felling the supply chain challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic especially keenly.

This was perhaps most evident at the height of the crisis when global supplies of cold and flu over-the-counter treatment Tylenol – which is also effective at providing relief from the symptoms of COVID-19.

This has led the New Jersey-based company to strengthen its collaboration with Microsoft to further increase the efficiency of its supply chain processes thanks to the application of the software giant’s advanced digital transformation technology such as Azure, AI, IoT, MES and Microsoft Cloud.

If we have vendors that supply us with raw materials, and data coming down from the cloud tells us that two of them are having some kind of supply chain interruption or issue, artificial intelligence knows who the other vendors are and can instantly make a selection and place an order without a human needing to take the time to generate a report and make that decision,” said Johnson & Johnson Senior Vice President and Group CIO of Global Supply Chain.

Other novel capabilities can be found at the other end of the supply chain, such as track-and-trace to address issues like theft and counterfeiting.