What is Quality Management system :
A Quality management system (QMS) is the core of any quality and compliance process. It is a regulatory requirement that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other global regulatory bodies consider critical. An automated QMS system reduces audit time and findings and lowers the risk of product recalls. It improves product quality and safety, increases customer satisfaction and ensures FDA and ISO compliance.
Pharmaceutical Quality professionals are facing more challenges, and have more opportunities to improve quality and compliance than ever before. Mergers and acquisitions, complex supply chains, data integrity issues, and tightening regulations are all forces that affect pharmaceutical quality strategies and processes on a day-to-day basis. Plus, the FDA and other regulatory bodies are increasingly focused not only on compliance, but on the importance of building a culture of Quality management in the pharmaceutical industry.
An effective pharmaceutical Quality management system (QMS) will help you develop a culture of quality, support data integrity, keep suppliers under control, and maintain overall compliance. QMS data must also be structured to drive consistent metrics, risk calculations, and other trend analysis.
What is the Purpose of Quality Management system :
A Quality management system can be defined as a collection of business processes that are focused on meeting customer requirements on a consistent basis. This may seem simple enough, however, it is essential that certain obstacles are overcome for your QMS to be successful.
With this in mind, ask yourself the following questions:
- Do the same mistakes keep on being repeated?
- Is there lack of visibility between each of your departments?
- Do you have a high customer churn rate, negative customer reviews or perhaps a declining bottom line?
If you answered yes to any of the above, it may be that your QMS is not working as it should be.
The purpose of a quality management system is to ensure every time a process is performed, the same information, methods, skills and controls are used and applied in a consistent manner. If there are process issues or opportunities, this is then fed into the quality management system to ensure continuous improvement.
Importance of Quality Management System:
Here are reasons why quality management systems are so important for pharmaceutical companies:
Lessen the Risk of Errors :
The most obvious reason to invest in a QMS is to assist your company to reduce errors made when producing products. Without an advanced system where all employees involved understand their roles and responsibilities and communicate with each other, there will be more chance that errors will be made. Pharmaceutical companies of all sizes are at risk of doing mistakes without QMS in place. With an advanced QMS in place, everyone understands the tasks they need while completing a project. And, what steps ought to be taken each time to lessen the risk of errors from occurring.
Cut Costs with Quality Management System :
Errors can result in the wastage of products and money for your company. Not only are you wasting money on scraping products with errors that don’t meet the standards they require, but also you are wasting your employee’s time. Redo the work because of errors takes time far from other important tasks that still ought to be complete. As an advanced QMS, it streamlines production, makes it more efficient, and helps everyone involved become more productive. Also, companies may be able to see an increase in profits as well.
Encourage you to Constantly Upgrade :
Implementing an advanced QMS is a great place to begin, but the work doesn’t end there. The current system which you are using is unlikely to remain consistent, which is really a good thing. A quality management system encourages companies to keep them updated to improve their operations and makes it easier to identify areas where you ought to change. Technologies may also change, requiring you to adapt and upgrade your system to run more smoothly.
Customer Satisfaction :
Improving your company’s efficiency and production process are huge benefits to having an advanced QMS in place. However, the foremost important goal of all pharmaceutical companies is to make products that will help customers to live better. Ensuring that you’re producing high-quality products that are thoroughly checked over throughout the whole production process means you’re delivering better products to your customers. Customer satisfaction is more important for the companies, as they give your company positive reviews, which leads to increase sales.