The role of quality teams within life sciences companies has changed drastically over the last several years. In the past, the Quality function focused much of its time and energy on regulatory compliance, while today the industry is tasked with helping to improve overall company performance and product quality. 
 
The reason is simple: quality touches virtually every point in the life sciences value chain, from ideation to market. Indeed, the Quality function can drive positive outcomes by leveraging the insights they possess to help transform the business.
 
Let’s explore three ways quality can impact company-wide performance, and as a result, the bottom line.
 
Reducing Supply Chain Risks
Life sciences companies are increasingly reliant on outsourced suppliers and contract manufacturers. Unfortunately, lack of appropriate supplier control often translates into costly product recalls.
 
Managing quality across a large network of geographically dispersed and virtual supply chain nodes is a major challenge few companies have mastered. Here is where Quality teams can have a huge impact, assuring continuity of supply both of current and new products.
 
By helping their companies establish, monitor and manage key performance indicators (KPIs) for supply chain partners, they can help ensure quality standards are met across the value chain. In doing so they can help prevent costly external failures from eating into revenues and tarnishing brand equity.
 
Driving a Culture of Quality
Good quality nearly always goes hand in hand with good compliance. However, a good compliance record doesn’t always translate into good quality products or processes. For a culture of quality to thrive, it’s crucial that companies hold everyone accountable for quality across the business, and not just a single department.
 
Quality teams can help ensure that all employees receive the training and education to serve the needs of the business, while enriching the knowledge and skillsets of their colleagues. It represents a tremendous opportunity for Quality to help drive the culture of the organization toward continuous improvement while making a positive long-term impact on the entire organization.
 
Increasing Productivity
Increasing productivity reduces cycle time in manufacturing. Because of advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and In-process Control (IPC) capabilities, certain aspects of production can become more streamlined, freeing up valuable resources (people) to focus on other value added, patient-centric activities. With more people available to focus on these more value-added activities, productivity and output are increased. And with AI and IPC, they can feel confident that the supply chain is being held to a high-quality standard even though less people may be monitoring it.
 
By focusing on these key areas, I believe Quality teams can truly help to transform the companies they work for. Improvements in all of these areas allow companies to focus on the delivery of life-changing, life-saving drugs, therapies and devices, instead of wasting time and resources on broken or outdated processes that put them at risk.