2021Tariq Farooq

Sanofi-Aventis

SVP Global Supply Chain

Tariq has been Senior Vice President Global Supply Chain at Sanofi, based in Geneva, Switzerland, since April 2017. He joined the company from Danone as VP Global Manufacturing and EMEA Operations, where he worked for seven years.

SCM interview

Tariq has described himself in Supply Chain Movement as naturally curious and driven to learn, collaborate and make a difference. He is currently responsible for the global supply chain across a diverse US$35 billion Pharma & Biotech business. Over the past four years, the company has transformed the supply chain, and the organization has delivered in terms of performance, pace of product launches, customer connection and satisfaction and, ultimately, what it can deliver to the top and bottom line, Tariq noted. “During the last year we have demonstrated our resilience as we’ve continued to serve patients and customers, despite all the challenges, which has elevated the appreciation of supply chain within the company even further.”

When asked about how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the pace of product innovation, he stated: “Things are changing fast; we’ve just seen the development of vaccines move from ten years to ten months. The way that pharma and healthcare companies have responded to the pandemic has been phenomenal. The genie is out of the lamp. The question ahead is, how we can we live up to this new expectation of speed to market?”

“Also, the amount of collaboration across the industry has been phenomenal. For example, Sanofi is collaborating with GSK and Translate Bio to develop two different COVID-19 vaccines. Plus, as recently announced, we are working with Pfizer BioNTech to produce a hundred million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine in our facilities in Frankfurt. It’s great to see this level of collaboration amongst competitors, as we all work together in the service of patients and humanity.” This emphasises the agility of the company.

Tariq and his team are serving the growing worldwide healthcare needs by setting themselves four supply chain priorities: “1) Re-invent ourselves to become even more patient-centric and customer-centric, 2) Deliver tailored solutions to efficiently serve the differing and evolving needs of our patients and customers, 3) Drive a digital transformation to give us real-time, end-to-end visibility and integration, all the way from patients through customers and back through our supply chains all the way back to our suppliers, and 4) Create a culture in which everyone feels engaged with the company purpose.”