Today’s pharmaceutical supply chains are under constant pressure. Evolving demands, complex regulations, and razor-thin margins mean one wrong forecast can ripple into shortages across entire regions.
In the Asia-Pacific (APAC), teams are often stuck in slow, manual planning cycles just as demand spikes and patients need treatment fast. This issue is what supply chain experts such as Muhammad Shahid aim to solve: “When you work in pharma, the customer is a real person waiting for their next dose, not an abstract concept,” he says. “This reality changes how seriously you treat every forecast and every decision.”
By leveraging Statistical forecasting, he reduced planning cycles by 25%. This proves that smarter supply chains directly impact patient lives. With more than 18 years of progressive experience, this sought-after supply chain expert has built deep expertise across commercial operations, planning, logistics, and regional supply chain leadership in APAC.
Muhammad’s background spans material planning, business analytics, institutional sales, logistics leadership, and large-scale supply chain transformation across more than 15 APAC markets. His formal training, being a Certified Supply Chain Professional (CSCP), complements this hands-on experience, allowing him to apply both structured methodologies and innovative thinking: “Supply chain used to be seen as just moving products from Point A to Point B. I’ve spent my career proving it’s a strategic powerhouse that directly drives business outcomes,” Muhammad shares.
Since January 2025, Muhammad has served as Senior Manager of Supply Chain Development for the APAC (Asia-Pacific) region. He oversees a complex network across Southeast Asia and Full Agency Markets, including Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos. In this role, he drives the APAC Supply Chain Strategy for 2025–2027, leads regional transformation initiatives, and acts as the main point of contact for Full Agency Markets, ensuring that regional operations align with global supply priorities: “My role is to connect market reality to production reality. If demand spikes in Australia, planners in Denmark, France or China need to feel that signal immediately,” Muhammad explains. “He describes the work as highly strategic: “It’s chess, not checkers,” he adds. “You have to anticipate moves three quarters ahead, not just react to what’s on fire today.”
As demand for diabetes and obesity continues to surge amid global supply constraints, his new demand planning tool (called OMP) revolutionizes how pharma planning decisions are made: “We had to move away from gut feel. Decisions needed to be statistical, transparent, and defensible, especially in crises,” he explains.
That same balance of rigorous analysis and human understanding defines how he works with people. Muhammad blends sharp analytical skills with a genuine human touch—something long-time colleague Mustafa Tarcan, AMET Senior Supply Chain Director, has witnessed firsthand: “I have known Muhammad for ten years. From when he reported to me when we first worked together, to our work on global demand planning, he has always impressed me with his mix of technical skill and people insight,” says Mustafa.
Mustafa also commends Muhammad’s attitude: “He has genuine warmth, empathy, and professionalism, as well as a supportive attitude to others. Muhammad is also solution-focused, always taking ownership and helping others, even beyond his role.”
On the technical side, Muhammad is an expert in S&OP, inventory optimization, and demand forecasting, making him the go-to person for complex challenges: “When a sudden regulatory change hit, he quickly modeled different scenarios, coordinated teams across functions, and rolled out a phased distribution plan that minimized waste and kept patients supplied. That combination of smart analysis and empathy is rare,” Mustafa shares.
The Forecasting Fiasco: Pharma's Hidden Bottleneck
Pharmaceutical supply chains across the APAC region are known to be very challenging to manage. Tight regulations, evolving demands, and fragmented data often turn planning into a guessing game. At Novo Nordisk, this reality was painfully clear before the OMP rollout. Teams spent weeks reconciling spreadsheets, yet forecast accuracy stalled at around 50 percent, leading to excess inventory and slowing decision-making: “Back then, we were constantly stuck doing manual tweaks, chasing shadows instead of paying attention to what the data was really telling us,” recalls Muhammad.
That firsthand frustration shaped the end-to-end perspective Muhammad brings to supply chain transformation today. Early in his career at Novo Nordisk, he built a deep operational foundation—overseeing logistics compliance, managing nationwide distributor networks, and leading inventory planning for new product launches. This on-the-ground experience gave him a clear understanding of where traditional planning breaks down, and why a more integrated, data-driven approach was needed.
That early operational grounding is witnessed by those who worked closely with Muhammad at the very start of his career. Zeeshan Rab, Diabetes Data Processing & Digital Services Manager covering the Scandinavian markets at Medtronic, previously worked with Muhammad when the former served as Business Operations Manager at Novo Nordisk in Pakistan between 2009 and 2010.
As Muhammad’s direct manager, Zeeshan witnessed firsthand how his blend of grit, analytical skill, and human leadership shaped regional supply chain practices: “He was very young, bright, and eager to learn, but what stood out most was his perseverance. Even when the outlook was bleak, he was always smiling and pushing both himself and the team forward,” Zeeshan recalls.
Beyond forecasting accuracy and inventory control, Zeeshan commends Muhammad’s ability to build trust across local, regional, and global teams, noting that his communication and stakeholder-management skills helped the market avoid backorders and gain priority during constrained supply situations: “His innovative solutions were noticed beyond his Pakistan and adopted as regional best practices,” he adds, pointing to Muhammad’s early involvement in critical supplier negotiations and complex regulatory discussions—always without compromising ethics or compliance.
Aside from his strong work ethic, Muhammad also continually upskilled through programs like the Korn Ferry Leadership Development Program. A CSCP-certified supply chain professional and Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt, Muhammad later became Supply Chain Planning & Project Manager from 2020 to 2021, leading demand planning and forecast accuracy improvements while steering monthly S&OP cycles during the height of the pandemic. He coordinated manufacturing sites and headquarters planners across three production origins, making sure supply decisions reflected real market signals: “My role was to connect what was happening in the market with what production teams needed to plan. If demand changed, I had to make sure supply moved with it, quickly and accurately,” he explains.
COVID-19 put the market and supply to the test. Demand shifted almost overnight, while disruptions in logistics, limited capacity, and complex regulations made planning much harder. Teams struggled to keep their plans in line with reality. At the same time, the pandemic revealed deeper, long-standing problems, pressure to be more sustainable, and outdated planning systems that couldn’t handle such sudden changes.
This instability was most visible in GLP-1 therapies. Demand surged far beyond any forecast, putting patient access at risk: “The forecast for the newly launched products was completely different from reality. Once it launched globally, demand exploded…many times higher than what any market had predicted,” Muhammad shares. This highly-regarded supply chain expert recalls how the impact quickly hit home: “Demand exploded much higher than expected. When patients started saying they couldn’t find their medication, it stopped being about numbers; it became personal.”
That realization pushed Muhammad beyond day-to-day planning and into wider industry collaboration. This sought-after expert became an active voice in broader supply chain forums, regularly sharing lessons learned through industry supply network communities. There, he exchanged insights with peers on challenges such as COVID-related disruptions, logistics constraints, and sustainability. By openly sharing best practices, Muhammad helped strengthen collective problem-solving across the ecosystem—creating ripple effects that extended beyond Novo Nordisk to partners and industry players across the country.
That same collaborative mindset carried directly into how he tackled Novo Nordisk’s planning challenge. Rather than treating it as a purely technical rollout, Muhammad co-designed the OMP tool with IO Supply Chain, blending statistical forecasting with essential regional and market inputs. As part of the core design team, he helped shape how the tool would actually work for planners on the ground, and then took responsibility for making it stick.
This innovation was decisive during a period of severe supply constraints. Muhammad demonstrated exceptional agility and strategic foresight, proactively identifying early risks of stock-outs for high-priority products. He orchestrated the redistribution of inventory across countries and aligned affiliates through collaborative task forces, ensuring uninterrupted patient access and preventing shortages. His decisive, solution-oriented approach set a benchmark for operational excellence in crisis management, directly benefiting millions of patients across the region.
Building OMP's Brain
Muhammad didn’t simply help build OMP; he also made sure people could trust and use it. After the system went live, he led APAC-wide capability building, developed comprehensive OMP training materials, and personally ran regional training sessions. Through hands-on workshops with supply chain teams, he strengthened forecasting skills, raised planning maturity, and gradually turned early skepticism into confidence.
“When we launched OMP, the biggest shift wasn’t the tool; it was the mindset. We had to convince teams to move away from gut feel to statistical thinking. That’s where the real change happened,” Muhammad recalls.
To make sure adoption lasted, he focused on people, not just the platform. He designed virtual simulations and country-specific training programs, personally upskilling teams across APAC markets: “If people don’t understand the why, the system becomes just another dashboard,” he explains.
With the people-centric programs, the use of statistical forecasting increased by nearly 90 percent. OMP also improved visibility by introducing standardized dashboards that increased transparency into supply chain performance and inventory adherence across the region.
As a result, forecast accuracy rose to 75 percent, planning cycles shortened by 25 percent, and inventory parameter reviews were standardized across APAC affiliates: “After OMP, statistical forecasting became the foundation. Teams spent less time fixing numbers and more time having meaningful S&OP conversations. This allowed local teams to focus on higher-value work instead of manual number crunching,” he recalls.
At its core, OMPaligned production with delivery, balancing inventory to prevent stockouts without creating excess: “Decisions stopped being guesswork. We finally had one version of the truth: from production runs in Europe all the way to distributor stock at the wholesaler level,” Muhammad shares. That clarity didn’t stay confined to planning. It reshaped how the organization executed.
Supercharged Delivery: Metrics That Matter
The same execution-first mindset carried into Muhammad’s role as Supply Chain Manager for Business Area South-East Asia from 2022 to 2024. With OMP providing a reliable, data-driven backbone, he shifted focus from stabilizing the system to accelerating outcomes on the ground.
During this period, Muhammad developed and executed the BASEA supply chain strategy, optimized S&OP and S&OE processes, and led the rollout of Regional Distribution Centre (RDC) services across the region. These initiatives shortened lead times, reduced exposure to currency volatility, and delivered measurable sustainability gains.
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One RDC implementation alone cut carbon emissions by up to 97 percent on key routes, dramatically reducing Thailand’s import footprint while improving service levels: “On paper, air freight looked fast. In reality, it was expensive, carbon-heavy, and fragmented. The Singapore RDC gave us control, speed, and sustainability—all at once,” Muhammad recalls.
Beyond day-to-day execution, he represented supply chain in business-area launch coordination and in finance and operations leadership forums, strengthening cross-functional alignment: “S&OP only works when finance, commercial, regulatory, and supply chain are in the same room. That’s how you prevent problems three quarters ahead—instead of reacting after patients feel the impact,” he explains.
The results were tangible. Planning cycles were shortened by 25 percent, enabling faster pivots as excess inventory in RDC for Thailand could be redirected to address shortages in Malaysia within days rather than weeks. Service levels exceeded 95 percent, generating millions in savings through optimized distributor agreements, value-chain redesigns, and stronger regional execution discipline. Most importantly, patients benefited from fewer supply disruptions, including in full agency markets such as Myanmar.
These outcomes earned Muhammad the 2022 Supply Chain Manager of the Year award. He is also a recipient of the Best Sales Forecaster of the Year 2019 award, recognizing his sustained forecasting excellence even before the OMP rollout.
Scaling the Future: AI's APAC Edge
As tariffs tighten and personalization accelerates, Muhammad is focused on what comes next in OMP. The goal is simple: utilize advanced capabilities to enable micro-level forecasting across the APAC region.
Today, he supports the APAC Supply Chain Strategy for 2025–2027, leading OKR-driven programs and implementing customer-focused frameworks across the region. He also manages quarterly OKR planning for the Supply Chain Transformation Program and develops fulfillment strategies that prioritize customer needs in diverse APAC markets. His focus is on ensuring products are available where they are needed most, not just managing logistics but solving real problems for patients and partners alike: “I designed OMP so that patients could receive their medication right away,” he recalls, showing his hands-on commitment to patient care.
His early career in institutional sales and tender management taught him that commercial priorities must align with supply realities: “I learned that decisions made upstream must translate into results downstream,” he explains. Now, he leverages that experience to renegotiate contracts, saving millions, and to establish frameworks that strengthen partnerships: “For example, contract negotiations with a distributor in Southeast Asia saved approximately $4 million,” he shares.
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Backed by an MBA from Muhammad Ali Jinnah University and a BS in Information Technology, Muhammad combines analytical discipline with real-world operational insight: “I’m really passionate about using technology to transform supply chains, taking them from traditional operations to more commercial, customer-focused solutions," he adds.
Muhammad proves that supply chains are not just about logistics; in fact, they are crucial as they can be lifesaving. Using AI, strategic thinking, and human insight, he turned complicated processes into faster, more accurate outcomes that directly help patients. In the end, every decision in pharma counts, because it’s not just medicine being delivered, it’s hope itself.”
