MNGT-E1005 - Strategy in Action, Lecture, 24.10.2023-30.11.2023

About the Group Assignments: 

Group assignment 1: Securing future medical supplies / Case: Tamro

See attached: Case description

Hand-in: 09:00 AM Thursday 2nd of November

Situation

Tamro is the leading pharmaceutical and health product distributor and service provider in Finland. Their market share in pharmaceutical distribution is approximately 60%. They offer services to pharmacies, hospitals, pharmaceutical and health product companies, grocers, shops specialising in health and wellbeing, as well as home care service providers. As the leading pharmaceutical distributor, Tamro carries a key role in health care. Should its operations suffer interruptions, the whole society would suffer.

Problem statement

Tamro’s capability in pharmaceutical distribution has been developed over decades. The key challenge is to continue developing and securing the supply and distribution in the uncertain future.

How can Tamro continue its crucial role in pharmaceutical distribution given on the one hand the strong trends of sustainability and digitalization (incl. AI and automation), and on the other hand disruptions, in particular the wars? What should be their solution and way forward when it comes to sustainable solutions in sourcing pharmaceuticals? How will AI influence the distribution business and enable both more efficient and secure operations in distribution? What is the impact of wars in this equation?

Assignment

Your task as a group is to offer advice for Tamro on how to analyze for the most impactful measures for pharmaceutical distribution given the above-mentioned trends. Bear in mind that the impact on customers (primarily pharmacies and hospitals), and citizens and their satisfaction has to be considered. In other words, you do not need to tell Tamro how to organize pharmaceutical distribution and run their business – but rather, how to approach and analyze for this complex problem.

You are invited to read the article (Scoblic (2020) in MyCourses) as well as check out the Playbook for Strategic Foresight and Innovation (a bunch of frameworks and tools), or the examples below of some potentially useful frameworks, so you get an idea. You are advised to search for tools and frameworks. You as a group will have to present three in total. It is up to you to figure out what these could be. Start by discussing among yourselves, then ask other, perhaps more experienced people (not the other teams, however!), and make searches on the internet on scholarly and other materials. Make sure the frameworks are applicable for this problem.

The structure of the PowerPoint presentation:

1.     Title page and group member names – give your presentation a descriptive title

2.     Present each model in 3-5 slides, including

-        the description of the model, framework or approach

-        benefits and pros, what can it be used for to address this problem

-        challenges and cons, what are its’ limits or why might it fall short in addressing this problem

-        you can also provide some further analysis, insights and advice

3.     Final slide on reflections on your key learnings and take-aways from this exercise

We share the presentations with Tamro. Please, let Aleksi know if you do not want your slideset to be shared with Tamro – this is not a problem at all!

Some potential frameworks (if you use these, find more materials where needed)

- Pareto principle - Wikipedia

- Carleton. T., Cockayne, W. & Tahvanainen, A.-J. (2013). Playbook for Strategic Foresight and Innovation

- Structured problem solving strategies can help break down problems to find better insights | McKinsey