INTERVIEW
From Risk to Resilience: How CRYOPDP Designs for the Unexpected
Risk in life sciences logistics is personal. It isn’t a theoretical problem on a spreadsheet; it’s about the real impact on patients.
Every shipment involves temperature-sensitive material, and even a minor delay or deviation can change someone’s life. The goal is to build a supply chain that stays ahead of trouble rather than merely scrambling to fix it.
Filipa Martins Gonçalves, EMEA MNC Business Development Manager at CRYOPDP, shares her perspective on how a proactive approach, real-time visibility, and robust contingency plans can help navigate uncertainty. Filipatreats risk as a serious responsibility and explains how they design systems to handle the unexpected. It’s a look at the work required to deliver reliable results in a world that is often unpredictable.
Q: How does CRYOPDP think about risk in logistics?
A: At CRYOPDP, we take risk personally. Ultimately, our collective job is to deliver life-saving therapies at the right temperature, at the right time, to the right patient. If any of these components fail, a patient might miss a critical treatment window. Therefore, in CRYOPDP, risk management is a moral obligation, not just a line item in a contract. We have an internal saying: be proactive, not reactive. This mindset enables us to mitigate all the risks.
Q: What does that design process look like?
A: Usually, this process is a combination of 2 main factors: experience and real-time information. We always conduct a route assessment and define contingency plans in conjunction with temperature-qualified packaging and real-time monitoring systems. For real-time monitoring, in addition to our 24/7 services and GPS-enabled temperature loggers, we now have the Atlas Path platform, our blockchain tool, which provides end-to-end visibility, enabling faster decision-making and helping anticipate unforeseen situations.
Q: How does this approach benefit customers?
A: Our approach brings operational certainty, which drastically reduces the risk of temperature excursions or failed treatments. Essentially, we take the ‘what-ifs’ out of the equation so our customers can focus on the science, while we focus on delivery.
Q: What defines resilience for CRYOPDP?
A: Well, to me, resilience is how we manage adverse experiences and learn from them going forward. In my experience, it comes down to where you put your focus and how adaptable you are to those “tough” circumstances. Over my years at CRYOPDP, I have seen that these skills are common to every discussion. Resilience is a part of the company’s DNA.
Q: How do you balance efficiency with redundancy?
A: I look at this on two levels.
Firstly, at the operational level, when we do our lane assessment either for a primary or as a backup plan: putting all the plans on the table, meaning having a backup plan A, B, C and so on, it won’t be ever enough, and it won’t be redundant, as we could be delivering a patient’s last hope.
The second level, given our internal SOPs and the nature of our teams, we always challenge ourselves to do better and faster. So, we are always keeping a critical eye on our processes, which lets us reduce unnecessary steps and keep our SOPs up to date, adjusting to the present reality.
Q: How do customers benefit from this resilience approach over time?
A: As with everything in life, there are many variables we can’t control: maybe we can control 80% of the time, or at least we tend to think we know the pattern or the trend. However, 20% is still a huge margin when it translates to someone’s hope for a cure. Our resilience approach benefits our customers because we don’t just plan for the trend; we build our entire infrastructure around the exception. We deliver certainty in those 20% where it matters most.