Supply Chain Performance Measurement in a Pharmaceutical Company in Rivers State

This research develops and applies a supply chain performance measurement framework for a pharmaceutical manufacturing company in Rivers State, South South Nigeria. Effective supply chain performance measurement is essential for identifying improvement opportunities, aligning functional activities with strategic objectives, and ensuring the uninterrupted availability of medicines in a country where supply chain failures have historically contributed to drug stockouts. This study adopts the Supply Chain Operations Reference model as the conceptual framework, adapting its five performance attributes of reliability, responsiveness, agility, cost, and asset management to the Nigerian pharmaceutical manufacturing context. A balanced scorecard of twelve key performance indicators is developed and applied using three years of operational data extracted from the company's enterprise resource planning system. Benchmarking is conducted against available regional pharmaceutical supply chain performance data from the literature. Results reveal strong performance on the reliability attribute but significant underperformance on agility, reflecting the company's limited ability to respond to unplanned demand surges for specific therapeutic categories. Recommendations include developing an emergency production protocol for high-priority medicines, establishing a dual-sourcing policy for three critical active pharmaceutical ingredients, and implementing quarterly supply chain performance reviews at the executive management level. Keywords: supply chain performance, SCOR model, pharmaceutical manufacturing, Rivers State, performance measurement