Demand planning for pharma, where safety stock expires
You can't cover uncertainty by holding more — it ages out. Likwid plans cover against the shelf life actually left on the batch, commits long-lead actives with the confidence shown, and forecasts tender demand separately from retail.
Planning FMCG instead? See demand planning for FMCG.
| Item | Per Day |
|---|---|
| Amoxicillin 500mgAntibioticssmooth | 44 |
| Surgical Gloves (M)Consumablesintermittent | 2 |
| Insulin Glargine PenCold Chainlumpy | 14 |
| Paracetamol 650mgAnalgesicssmooth | 180 |
| Cotton Roll 500gConsumablessmooth | 68 |
What makes pharma demand planning different?
In most industries you buy certainty with inventory. In pharma, inventory has a clock on it.
Over-forecast and the cover you built expires as a write-off. Under-forecast and you're short of a product a patient is waiting on. The two errors pull in opposite directions, which is why a pharma plan has to weigh the confidence of a forecast as heavily as its value — and why expiry, batch size and API lead time belong inside the planning maths rather than beside it.
Four constraints a generic forecast ignores
None of these are about better maths. They're about what the number is allowed to assume.
Your safety stock has an expiry date
Everywhere else, uncertainty is covered by holding more. In pharma, holding more is how you create a write-off — the buffer you built against a stockout quietly ages out on the rack. Forecast error costs you in both directions, and they pull opposite ways.
You commit to the API before you know the demand
Imported actives run long lead times, so the purchase decision is taken months ahead of the month it serves. By the time the market tells you it was wrong, the material is already on a vessel — or already in your store.
Demand arrives in steps, not trends
Retail demand trends. Institutional and tender demand jumps — a win is a step change that no moving average saw coming, and a loss removes a block of volume the same way. Averaging the two together forecasts neither.
Shelf life is consumed in your own warehouse
A product with two years of shelf life that sat eight months with you isn't a two-year product any more. Distributors want remaining life, so stock that looks perfectly good on a stock report can already be hard to place.
From a forecast to an API purchase order
The same three screens every cycle — demand per SKU with the pattern named, what it nets to once batches and their expiry are counted, and the order that goes to the API vendor.
| Item | Forecast | Conf | Pattern |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amoxicillin 500mg CapsFG-AMX-500 | 8,400 No | 88% | Steady |
| Paracetamol IP 650mgFG-PCM-650 | 12,600 No | 85% | Seasonal |
| Cough Syrup 100mlFG-CGH-100 | 9,300 No | 81% | Seasonal |
| Insulin Glargine PenFG-INS-PEN | 1,150 No | 64% | Lumpy |
| Oncology Vial · 100mgFG-ONC-100 | 260 No | 51% | Intermittent |
Plan to what can still be sold
Cover targets that respect remaining life
Safety stock is planned against the shelf life actually left on the batch, not a flat days-of-cover number — so the buffer is sized to what can still be sold rather than to what fits in the rack.
Expiry-aware netting, batch by batch
On-hand supply is counted with its expiry attached. A batch that will age out before the demand it was meant to cover isn't treated as supply, so the plan stops double-counting stock you can't actually ship.
Lead-time-aware commitment on actives
Long-lead APIs are planned on their own horizon, with the forecast's confidence shown at the point of commitment — so a low-confidence number is visibly a low-confidence bet rather than a line in a spreadsheet.
Lumpy and intermittent patterns, handled honestly
Tender, institutional and specialty items are classified as lumpy or intermittent and routed to methods that suit them, with wide confidence bands where the truth is genuinely uncertain instead of false precision.
Built on Likwid's demand forecasting engine, feeding S&OP and procurement.
Illustrative of how the platform is designed to behave — actual figures depend on your catalogue and data.
Pharma demand planning, answered
Looking at the wider system? See ERP for pharmaceutical manufacturing · inventory · pricing.
Explore the rest of the platform
See it plan against your own shelf life
A 30-minute walkthrough on your SKUs — cover sized to remaining life, batches counted with their expiry, and the API commitment that follows.
