Quality Culture in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Book excerpt: Why so many pharmaceutical companies are struggling to meet GMP and other regulatory requirements?The reason is clear: because they are trying to improve their quality management systems by fixing symptoms rather than by attacking the fundamental and primary root cause of their problems which is the lack of adequate quality and compliance culture.The purpose of this book is to provide those leaders and senior managers with a clear roadmap to solve their regulatory problems and to return to the route of compliance by implementing a strong, positive quality and compliance culture. The recipe is simple: all you need is good people (including good leaders and senior managers), good procedures and good training programs sailing into a strong and positive culture of quality and compliance.When a company implements a behavior-based quality and culture compliance, they look into their problems as a whole, and they understand that there are multiple factors (including the soft ones related to personal and organizational behaviors) that affect performance. A very positive consequence of this systematic thinking is the shift from CAPA programs mostly correctives to ones where the systemic preventive actions are predominant.Quality is everyone's responsibility, but when it comes to creating, strengthening, or maintaining a culture within an organization, there is one group who really owns it: the leaders and senior managers.The good news is that creating or strengthening a positive and sustainable quality culture is an achievable task although not an easy or quick one. In this book you will find ten foundational principles of a strong and positive quality culture, their associated desired behaviors and a set of leading indicators that can be used to monitor and enhance leadership engagement, people engagement, and culture and maturity.