A multi-criteria decision-making framework for the selection of strategies for acquiring biopharmaceutical manufacturing capacity

Selecting an appropriate path for acquiring commercial-scale biopharmaceutical manufacturing capacity often requires the rationalisation of multiple conflicting criteria and the reconciling of financial and non-financial issues. Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) can provide a holistic framework for evaluating such scenarios. This paper presents the development of a decision-support framework for decision-making scenarios involving the acquisition of commercial-scale biopharmaceutical manufacturing capacity that utilises MCDM. To illustrate the functionality of the framework, a hypothetical scenario was constructed based on a biopharmaceutical company faced with a number of options for acquiring commercial manufacturing capacity. A deterministic analysis showed that building manufacturing capacity was the highest ranking option for the scenario considered. Stochastic analyses demonstrated that this option was also the highest ranking overall.