Excellence in Management of Contract Manufacturing Relationships

Contract manufacturing relationships have become an integral part of pharmaceutical supply chains. Pharmaceutical supply chains are characterized by solid regulation, technological complexity, and high investment pressure, which encourages collaboration between client companies and CMOs. However, due to the high relevance for clients and the high complexity of pharmaceutical value creation, contract manufacturing relationships always move in a field of tension between client control and trust‐based self‐control. In addition, the relationship dynamics, the collaboration scope, and the multitude of different partners require companies to target their management approach with an eye on risk and value creation, as comprehensive control is unfeasible.
Against this background, the study addresses the question of excellent relationship management in pharmaceutical contract manufacturing. To this aim, the study first paints a broad picture of particular challenges. It then focuses on selected practices for developing contract manufacturing relationships, tailoring relationship
management, and aligning partners. A consortium of five pharmaceutical companies from the D‐A‐CH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) region,
representing both the client and the CMO side, is involved in the study to ensure the practicality of the results.