Ivan Lai

As supply chains grow more complex, External Manufacturing (EM) has become a strategic lever for improving speed, scalability, and operational efficiency. By partnering with specialized external manufacturers, organizations can streamline procurement workflows, reduce internal bottlenecks, enhance visibility, and improve cost and service performance. This session explores how leading medtech and healthcare companies are leveraging EM to strengthen supplier relationships, optimize sourcing processes, and create more agile, end-to-end supply chain models. Through practical examples and proven strategies, attendees will learn how EM can serve as a catalyst for procurement modernization and cross-functional alignment.

• Unlock procurement speed and efficiency by learning how EM partners help organizations reduce sourcing cycle times, simplify vendor management, and accelerate decision-making through standardized processes, shared platforms, and integrated data flows

• Improve cost control and risk management by leveraging external manufacturing capacity and expertise to balance cost pressures, diversify risk, and stabilize supply while improving service levels

• Enable scalable, future-ready supply chain models through EM partnerships

As the AI buzz surrounds us and you hear the great use cases by other companies, how do you assess your supply chain and develop an AI strategy tailored to your company's needs? Should you invest in a comprehensive AI solution or automate individual workflows? Focus on automation, decision-making, or fix the data foundation first? How to prepare your team for this transition? This talk will walk you through the assessment and strategy-development steps.