How CONNEX Marketplace Is Helping Manufacturers Reshore
In its quest to strengthen U.S. supply chains, the software and business solutions company that brought manufacturers CONNEX Marketplace is learning just how limited most searches for supply chain partners really are. And it’s aiming to do something about it (Outsourced Pharma).
What’s going on: “Despite our operating in an era described as ‘information overload’ and ‘AI-assisted,’ biopharma, [contract development and manufacturing organizations] and the rest of the supply chain reflexively turn to familiar search channels” in looking for external partners and suppliers, who in turn seek out material sources.
- “When manufacturers are challenged about not using a fuller domestic supply chain, the reply is, ‘We don’t have the materials here in the U.S.’ or ‘We don’t have that service here,’” i5 Services President and CEO Alan Davis told the news outlet.
Why it’s a problem: Unless manufacturers gain a better understanding “of what our actual capabilities are within our country,” U.S. domestic sourcing challenges will continue, Davis said.
- That’s why i5 created the NAM-backed CONNEX Marketplace, which connects manufacturers, buyers and sellers in the U.S.
- As CONNEX has shown, “there are untapped capabilities and unrealized opportunities to work with domestic suppliers,” Davis continued.
The solution: CONNEX Marketplace seeks to improve domestic searches and in so doing, create “a positive loop”: “[T]he more [it] lead[s] you to domestic supplies and services, the stronger those channels become.”
