Risk assessment for pharmaceutical industry in uncertain environment: An integrated multi-criteria decision-making approach

The pharmaceutical industry is the backbone of the healthcare system for any country. However, this industry faces various risks, which hamper its efficient working in providing life-saving medicines/services to the people. In this context, the purpose of the study is to improve the resilience and performance of the pharmaceutical industry (PI) with the identification, and assessment of supply chain (SC) risks. A case illustration has also been presented in the Indian context. The study utilizes an extensive literature survey and the Delphi method for identifying, finalizing, and classifying the risks into seven categories. The Intuitionistic Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (IF-AHP) has been used to analyze and prioritize the risks to determine their criticality. The results show that the three most important risks are financial, supplier, and demand/customer/market. Within these risks, the three most critical sub-risks are found to be loss of customers, raw material (RM) issues, and bad reputation of the company, respectively. The study provides managers with an extensive list of PI risks for their consideration. The results also present the critical risks which need to be mitigated for enhanced performance and resilience of the industry. The study also emphasizes the importance of interconnection between various SC partners for better risk management.