Article at a glance:

Improving quality in pharma manufacturing

• Drug and medical-product manufacturers tend to trail companies in other industries in measuring and controlling product quality. The result: inefficient processes and huge regulatory fines.
• Many pharma executives hesitate to change their approach to quality management, claiming that strict regulation makes changes far too costly and complicated. But even in the tightest regulatory markets, a few pharma companies have managed to raise quality significantly and to reduce regulatory risk.
• The ways these leaders have raised quality and lowered compliance risk include a cultural shift toward manufacturing quality, adding quality measures midstream to manufacturing processes, and simplifying quality- and compliance-management systems.