Ensuring Compliance

July 1, 2006

In the pharmaceutical industry, collaboration among teams in the manufacturing process has become critical. The highly competitive nature of the industry puts pressure on manufacturers to move products quickly from development to production.

At the same time, increasing regulation is forcing these manufacturers to comply with quality assurance programs and implement track-and-trace procedures. In response to these pressures, pharmaceutical companies are using collaboration tools to bring research and development (R&D), manufacturing engineers and quality teams together as the product moves from development to production.

Collaboration cuts down development time by allowing teams to work on R&D, production engineering and quality concurrently. "The scientist puts the recipe into the collaboration tool and it goes down to the production guys and the quality guys," says Carey Clements, product manager for life sciences products at Honeywell Process Solutions, in Phoenix. "The tool puts them all iin the same place so they can see the same thing, which helps move the product from the development lab to the manufacturing floor."

Clements notes that a Web portal is used to support development collaboration in the life sciences. "The scientist puts in the recipe and the process team in the production area and the quality team can link to it," says Clements.

See the main story that goes with this sidebar: Improving Processes Through Shared Work