UPS’s Daniel Gagnon On What We Must Do To Create Nationally Secure And Resilient Supply Chains

The cascading logistical problems caused by the pandemic and the war in Eastern Europe, have made securing a reliable supply chain a national imperative. In addition, severe cyberattacks like the highly publicized Colonial pipeline attack, have brought supply chain cybersecurity into the limelight. So what must manufacturers and policymakers do to ensure that we have secure and resilient supply chains? In this interview series, we are talking to business leaders who can share insights from their experiences about how we can address these challenges. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Daniel Gagnon, Vice President Of Global Strategy & Acquisition Integration at UPS Healthcare.

Daniel has been at UPS his whole career and has 29 years experience across multiple business functions with the company, and recently he has been focused on healthcare logistics. In his current role, he oversees the expansion of UPS Healthcare’s capabilities and its network as the lead for Global Strategy & Acquisition Integration globally. Under his purview, UPS is setting ambitious goals for its healthcare business, like doubling healthcare revenue to reach $20 billion by 2026, double what it made last year.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you. Can you tell us a bit about how you grew up?

I attended the University of Pittsburgh where I received an Industrial Engineering degree. An old tradition at UPS required everyone to start their career as a package car driver, and I appreciated being on the front lines of the customer experience. I eventually moved into an operations and industrial engineering role — later obtaining my master’s in business administration. I have always tried to be a servant leader and never said no to opportunities that came my way. That eventually led me to UPS Healthcare, which is a critical part of the UPS business.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

I can neither confirm nor deny this, but it’s possible I may have oversold my computer programming abilities during an early job interview at UPS many years ago. Thankfully, I got the job and was able to quickly get up to speed while completing my first project. At the time, my supervisors let it slide as I had impressed them with my strong work ethic and willingness to learn on the job. This story is all hypothetical, of course.

You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

I believe in servant leadership. It’s critical to listen to the perspectives of your customers and those around you. That’s the secret sauce to delivering and exceeding expectations. Some of my favorite memories in my career were at customer round table sessions when I was based in Europe and got to really hear directly from the customer. This kind of collaboration allowed us to talk through changes that created meaningful solutions and often led to smart investments by UPS.

You can never underestimate the power of developing strong public speaking skills. I’ve presented at 14 of the last 20 UPS Healthcare Forums and learned the importance of captivating the audience and sharing the “why” behind the “what”, especially as UPS Healthcare looks to strategically expand in the future. At these events, there is a lot to discuss and it’s critical that I can communicate those messages in a way that resonates across the industry and with business leaders.

The last thing I’ll mention are the importance of analytical skills. This probably shows the engineer coming out of me, but I love Excel and data. I love to build forecasting models that support business cases and quantify operational efforts. At UPS Healthcare, data is at the center of everything we do, allowing for more efficient and reliable end-to-end supply chain logistics and services.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

One of the newest projects I am working on is the opening of UPS Healthcare Labport, an innovative, end-of-runway solution for laboratory companies, designed to improve turnaround times of diagnostic specimens. Labport will provide customers with a centralized and commercially biosafe level 2 laboratory for around-the-clock diagnostic testing, enabling more efficient diagnosis and faster patient results.

Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. In order to ensure that we are all on the same page let’s begin with some simple definitions. What does the term “supply chain” encompass?

Supply chain is such a broad term as it covers everything needed to manufacture and bring a product to market. Logistics is the necessary part of the supply chain that moves critical shipments. In the healthcare logistics space, we often use the term complex supply chain because there is so much more involved than just your standard transportation and storage. For more than 20 years, UPS Healthcare has focused on an end-to-end supply chain solution that includes active and passive cold chain packaging, temperature-controlled and monitored vehicles, multi-temperature zone warehouses and heavily regulated documentation and prioritized handling.

Can you help articulate what the weaknesses are in our current supply chain systems?

Demand planning and inventory policy development remain the most challenging aspects of running an efficient supply chain. Exciting developments and integration of AI and machine learning in the past few years will help accelerate improvements, but there is more that needs to be done. The healthcare logistics industry as a whole needs to sharpen its focus to address the shrinking global labor force, lack of global sustainability and increase investments in better cold chains as the drug pipeline is now dominated by biologics, vaccines and cell and gene therapies, all of which require temperature-controlled solutions. At UPS Healthcare, we have been investing to build out a ‘network within a network’ to make sure we provide the best quality, end-to-end service on the market. These investments include a focus on advanced technologies, automated picking systems and track-and-trace solutions that can play a vital role in streamlining order fulfillment, reducing errors, increasing efficiency and ensuring regulatory compliance.

Can you help define what a nationally secure and resilient supply chain would look like?

A nationally secure and resilient supply chain is when its data is secure (blockchain), provides visibility and transparency across multiple stakeholders and has business continuity plans prepped ahead of time. At UPS Healthcare, we ensure security and resiliency by leveraging UPS Premier, an advanced track, trace and redirect technology-led shipping solution that prioritizes and tracks critical shipments within 3 meters of their location anywhere in UPS’s global network. The best logistics partners can also provide a ‘control tower’ overview of an entire supply chain. This approach reveals ways to improve collaboration and efficiency that lead to smart, fast, sustainable decisions based on real-time data instead of guesswork.

What would you recommend for the government or for tech leaders to do to improve supply chain cybersecurity?

I think globally, governments need to further develop and enforce comprehensive standards for all suppliers and contractors. Enhancing threat intelligence sharing between government agencies and private sector partners is also crucial.

What are the “5 Things We Must Do To Create Nationally Secure And Resilient Supply Chains” and why?

The 5 things we must do to create a nationally secure and resilient supply chain include:

1. Diversify and avoid dependency on any one region.
2. Implement robust data-driven supply chain controls to ensure rapid detection, response and recovery from disruptions.
3. Foster collaboration between private and public stakeholders to strengthen overall supply chain resilience.
4. Provide visibility and transparency at every stage of the delivery process. UPS Healthcare does this through our UPS Premier shipping solution.
5. Ensure there is the ability to combine security with effective shipping solutions like the use of cold chain technology.

Are there other ideas or considerations that should encourage us to reimagine our supply chain?

From a healthcare logistics perspective, ensuring precise and reliable delivery of essential medical supplies, medications and equipment are vital for patient care. UPS Healthcare leverages transparency with UPS Premier and our massive cold chain network that handles temperature-sensitive products like vaccines and the rapidly growing pipeline of new biologics. Having robust healthcare logistics support also unlocks quick and effective action even during crises scenarios on a global scale.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I don’t think we can overemphasize the importance of women’s health and education. Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice once noted that taking care of mothers will lead to significant improvements in the overall community’s well-being and stability. Essentially, take care of moms for a more just and prosperous world.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Follow me on LinkedIn and read more about how UPS Healthcare plans to be the #1 complex healthcare logistics provider in the world on our website and LinkedIn.

This was very inspiring and informative. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this interview!

About The Interviewer: David Leichner is a veteran of the Israeli high-tech industry with significant experience in the areas of cyber and security, enterprise software and communications. At Cybellum, a leading provider of Product Security Lifecycle Management, David is responsible for creating and executing the marketing strategy and managing the global marketing team that forms the foundation for Cybellum’s product and market penetration. Prior to Cybellum, David was CMO at SQream and VP Sales and Marketing at endpoint protection vendor, Cynet. David is the Chairman of the Friends of Israel and Member of the Board of Trustees of the Jerusalem Technology College. He holds a BA in Information Systems Management and an MBA in International Business from the City University of New York.