SCORe!

LAPTOP Scholar Sandra Pulgarín expects her training in Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) to help her shatter glass ceilings and strengthen last mile supply chain functions in Latin America

The RHSC’s LAPTOP Scholarship program aims to attract young talent into the field of supply chain management and give starting logisticians a step up in their careers. But every now and then, a scholarship is awarded to a more experienced supply chain manager, to empower them to improve supply chain systems strategically and with knowledge and authority. Sandra Pulgarín is just such a LAPTOP Scholar. The UNFPA Regional Consultant on Supplies, based in Bogotá, Colombia, supports governments in managing UNFPA-donated reproductive health supplies. Her special focus is to provide technical assistance on last mile logistics and her training as a pharmaceutical chemist helps her support UNFPA offices as they strive to get supplies to end-users on time, with quality uncompromised.

Supply chains, inside-out

Sandra has worked with supply chains from every imaginable perspective, from importing stem cells for leukemia patients to overseeing 500+ service delivery points as technical director during the decentralization of Colombia’s health system. The priority countries she works on are Honduras, Bolivia, and Haiti, and Argentina, with plans to expand to Venezuela. She has helped create special management tools to monitor good storage practices and supply chain management, such as the Logistics Dashboard and SCOD Tool (a supply chain operation diagnostic tool), and she is well-versed in the multiple challenges facing supply chains.

Cold chains are unreliable, she explains, as operators often disregard guidelines; refrigeration breaks down, and guidelines vary from facility to facility. As a result, the quality of products like oxytocin that rely heavily on refrigeration is often seriously compromised. Compounded by weak quantification processes and a shortage of environmentally sustainable standards challenges in the pharmaceutical field, as well as recent setbacks due to the breakdown of logistics chains such as Covid-19 and the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the supply landscape needs urgent attention, she says.

But she is hopeful that her recent LAPTOP-funded studies will make a distinct difference in how efficiently she can address these challenges. Sandra chose to study how to manage and measure the performance of global supply chains using the Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model, with specialist training and certification. “SCOR offers a world standard for linking processes and performance metrics within logistics processes,” Sandra explains. “It opens up a whole new vision in my daily work,” she says, “complementing my professional experience and positioning me as a leader in my country, helping me improve supply chains in my region. My scholarship could not have come at a better time.”

“The statistics are against women.”

Especially significant is that Sandra is one of the 20 women to be trained in SCOR, out of the 400 students her instructor has trained at E2E Supply Chain Management school in Colombia and Peru. “The RHSC is doing what must be done in supporting women in this field,” she says. “We need to create a critical mass of women in male-dominated supply chain management. I have never been able to access a management position or a regional management position. I always finish among the three top candidates for supply chain jobs, but usually the job goes to a man. SCOR training will help me take on the glass ceilings.”

“Much more delicate than moving beer or sodas”

Sandra is passionate about eliminating unmet need for family planning and ending preventable maternal deaths. Although the availability of supplies has increased, efficient deliveries to end users has not, she says. End-users in her field are unique, they are not regular consumers. “They are invariably people suffering from ailments or needing medicines to prevent diseases. The healthcare supply chain is much more delicate than moving beer or sodas. We are talking about people and their health.”

A firm believer in regional self-sufficiency, Sandra points out the irony of importing active pharmaceutical ingredients from as far away as India and China when her own community is situated in the backyard of the Amazon rainforest with its rich supply of natural resources. Supply chain is the answer to redress this conundrum, she says.

Sandra remembers moving from a pharmacy-based career to supply chain because “I did not like to stay locked in a laboratory as a pharmaceutical chemist, and I became attracted to logistics as I could move locations as necessary, study problems from different angles, and make impactful changes that would matter”. With her dedication to healthcare end-users, her ambition to challenge gender inequities in supply chain, her regional vision, and her last-mile technical expertise, Sandra can expect an exciting professional future, and the RHSC wishes her the very best.