How Pharma Automates Without Disrupting Operations

As the business case for automation in pharmaceutical supply chains shifts toward resilience, the questions customers bring to the table have changed as well, according to Garrett Freeman, sales director at Swisslog Americas. Speaking with Pharmaceutical Commerce at LogiPharma USA 2026, Freeman says his conversations at the show focused less on which technology or solution to deploy and more on implementation. The prevailing question, he says, is "how do we adapt and validate so that this solution doesn't disrupt our operating framework, our regulatory requirements?"

For physical automation, that question is complicated by uncertainty about what volumes will look like five, 10 or 15 years out. Freeman says accounting for that uncertainty has been paramount in customer conversations, and that solving the technology and hardware piece is only part of the work. Change management and implementation at scale across the enterprise present their own challenges.

Brownfield projects show what's at stake. When a company is upgrading an existing facility or a node within its network, Freeman says the goal is to eliminate operational and manufacturing disruptions, while maintaining regulatory compliance.

The emphasis on redundancy carries into the engineering details. "We can't have a single point of failure in any of our systems," Freeman says. He adds that customers and the broader market generally do a good job of defining those requirements.

Several sessions at the show reinforced another challenge Freeman says he has felt personally: stakeholder alignment. Getting every party in the supply chain in the room and agreed on the mission, the goal and the execution plan is particularly difficult in pharma, given the number of internal departments, regulatory bodies and quality functions involved. Freeman says technology suppliers have a responsibility to help customers recognize that from the outset, engaging those stakeholders early to capture requirements and position customers to succeed with whatever future network design they pursue.

Watch the first installment of Freeman’s interview:

1. Why Pharma Is Automating for Resilience