Quotes from Article Relationship to MGT314

‘But as soon as pressure built in the array of  Forecasting- To take informed

pumps, tubes and tanks at the plant on Sept. decisions such as to match supply and
11, it became clear something was wrong, demand
Pfizer team leaders told The Washington Post
in the most detailed public accounting of the
company’s efforts to Produce mass quantities
of vaccine.’
When a vat operators checked at the end of  Feedback- Pfizer got their product
the production run, (vaccine) checked as they desired to
most of the key ingredient — the fat molecule acquire knowledge about whether they
encasing the did their job correctly or not.
messenger RNA — was missing.
The  Capacity- It is the vaccine’s capacity
vaccine is composed of a lipid nanoparticle, a to immune a person from the virus.
sphere of fat
molecules encapsulating a strand of
messenger RNA, which
instructs human cells to make proteins that
trigger antibodies
and prime the immune system against future
viral invasions.
But it would do little good unless  Impact of technology
Pfizer could rapidly take the  Impact of correct equipment
new nanoparticle technology from lab
to mass production
The company and its vaccine partner  Competitiveness
BioNTech would ultimately  Pfizer has a competitive edge
master the job of churning out large batches
of mRNA vaccine,
making it the clearest winner among drug
companies to emerge
from the pandemic
“The weight of the world was on us. We have
the manufacturing capability for a solution to
the pandemic, and we knew we couldn’t go
fast enough,” said Chaz Calitri, Pfizer’s vice
president of operations for injectable drugs in
the United States and Europe.
Experts say waiving patents won’t help
poorer nations acquire technical complexity
of manufacturing coronavirus vaccines. (Luis
Velarde/The Washington Post)
Pfizer and other companies are building
mRNA vaccine pipelines for influenza, HIV,
tuberculosis, rabies, rotavirus, malaria, and
Zika, according to an analysis by the
investment advisory firm Berenberg Capital
Markets.
What looks like success now was not clear at
all on March 20, 2020
The building where most of the coronavirus
vaccine production happens is a quarter-mile
long.
Pfizer ordered every special freezer it could
get from supplier Thermo Fisher, and then
asked Thermo Fisher to make more
We had no expertise at that point about this
Inside Pfizer’s race to produce the world’s
biggest supply of covid vaccine about
equipment, and we had to develop a way to
make it commercially viable.”
The company said on Nov. 9
 Capacity- Pfizer did not have the
capacity to distribute doses to all the
countries around the globe at once.
 Impact of Technology in production
 Determinant of effective capacity-
Product and service factors
 Judgmental forecasting technique
 Determinants of effective capacity-
Facilities (size of the location)
 Available Capacity- Pfizer made sure
that they have available resources,
skills and equipment for their work
 Expertise- Pfizer lacked some
expertise in operating some
equipment. The best alternative at that
time for a production company would
be ‘buying’. Since, covid is a different
and unfortunate situation, Pfizer had
to overcome their flaws.
 Effectiveness of the forecast-
that its vaccine was shown to be more than 90
percent effective at preventing covid-19
Forecasts are rarely perfect and the
effectiveness of each forecast should
be mentioned, which Pfizer did by
mentioning that their vaccines are
90% effective.