Search Our Site  
Owned by Bill Platt: (405) 780-7745 9am-6pm CST, Mon to Fri



Quality by Design Streamlines Pharmaceutical Manufacturing

Copyright © 2008 Norm Howe


The pharmaceutical industry wastes more than $50 billion a year in manufacturing costs, this according to findings of a study on the interplay of pharmaceutical manufacturing and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The study, conducted jointly by Olin School of Business at Washington University and McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, received no funding from either the pharmaceutical industry or the FDA.

The goal of the study was to understand how the FDA regulates pharmaceutical production and how those regulations may be inhibiting advances in manufacturing. The study looked at data collected from 42 manufacturing facilities owned by 19 manufacturers, in particular each company?s manufacturing performance in terms of cycle time, frequency of deviations, reasons for deviations, yield, and improvement rates on key manufacturing metrics.

The outcome identified two factors that could be assisted by Quality-by-Design. First, companies using information technology to electronically track and report on manufacturing and centrally stored all their data displayed superior manufacturing performance relative to those not using such information technology. Second, the ability of employees in lower ranks to make decisions directly correlated to gains in manufacturing performance, particularly regarding deviation management, lot failure, lot review and process validation.

The FDA?s Quality by Design (QbD) initiative has shifted quality control from a static end result to an ongoing, evolving entity?one that tracks a product from inception to creation, rather than looks only at the final product. The QbD initiative, which originated from the Office of Biotechnology Products (OBP), attempts to provide guidance on pharmaceutical development to facilitate design of products and processes that maximizes the product?s efficacy and safety profile while enhancing product manufacturability.



Fundamental to this initiative is the understanding of the relationship between the quality attributes of the product (physicochemical and biological properties) and their impact on the safety and efficacy. This requires knowledge of the relationship between structure and biological functions.

In short, QbD is a scientific, risk-based, holistic and proactive approach to pharmaceutical development, as well as deliberate design effort from product conception through commercialization. QbD offers a full understanding of how product attributes and process relate to product performance.

The initiative benefits everyone by ensuring better design of products with less problems in manufacturing. It also reduces the number of manufacturing supplements required for post market changes, and allows for implementation of new technology to improve manufacturing without regulatory scrutiny, as well as possible reduction in overall costs of manufacturing.

QbD ensures reduced deficiencies, quicker approvals, and improved interaction with FDA. It also allows for continuous improvements in products and manufacturing process, as well as a better understanding of how APIs and excipients affect manufacturing. Lastly, it relates manufacturing to clinical during design, and provides a better overall business model.




About The Author:
Norm Howe, Senior Partner at Validation and Compliance Institute, consultants for the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. He got his BS at UC, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in chemistry at UCLA. He has held many management positions in FDA regulated industries, most at BASF. http://www.vcillc.com

VOTE ON THIS ARTICLE

Needs Work >> 0 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 << Excellent Article

Tell our authors what you think about their article.


Automatically Post This Article To Your Blog by inserting your Email-To-Blog Address, as can be set up in your Blogging software:


"Link Back To This Article" Copy-And-Paste


Are You Using This Article? We want to know about it.

HTML Article Copy-And-Paste


TEXT Article Copy-And-Paste


Article Description Copy-And-Paste


Article Keywords Copy-And-Paste




*** Digital Reprint Rights ***

  • If you publish this article in a website/forum/blog, You Must Set All URL's or Mailto Addresses in the body of the article AND in the Author's Resource Box as Hyperlinks (clickable links).


  • Links must remain in the form that we published them. Clean links should point to the Author's links without redirects having been inserted into the copy.


  • You are not allowed to Change or Delete any Words or Links in the Article or Resource Box. Paragraph breaks must be retained with articles. You can change where the paragraph breaks fall, but you cannot eliminate all paragraph breaks as some have chosen to do.


  • Email Distribution of this article Must be done through Opt-in Email Only. No Unsolicited Commercial Email.


  • You Are Allowed to format the layout of the article for proper display of the article in your website or in your ezine, so long as you can maintain the author's interests within the article.


  • You may not use sentences from this article as an input for any software that steals sentences from others in order to build an article with software. The copyright on this article applies to the "WHOLE" article.



  • *** Author Notification ***

    We ask that you notify the author of publication of his or her work. Norm Howe can be reached at:
    info@vcillc.com


    *** Print Publication Reprint Rights ***

    If you desire to publish this article in a PRINT publication, you must contact the author directly for Print Permission at: info@vcillc.com


    Creative Commons License
    This work is licensed under a
    Creative Commons License.


    (You are not required to show the creative commons license notice when you reprint this work.)




    Quick Links:
    Home | Article Distributions | Ghost Writers
    Article Marketing Blog | Article Marketing Ebook


    Unless Otherwise Noted, All Content On This Site Is:
    Copyright © 2001-2008, The Phantom Writers