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Quality KPIs in Pharmaceutical and Food Industry

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Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to investigate what type of quality key performance indicators (KPIs) companies use and how they utilize the results of these KPIs.

Methods

This e-mail survey is aimed at the personnel in the pharmaceutical and the food industries of Finland responsible for quality.

Results

Quality KPIs were similar for both the pharmaceutical and food industries with some differences existing in their usage and reporting. In the pharmaceutical industry, the most common quality KPI was rejected batches followed by the number of complaints, product defects, and deviations. The number of complaints was the most common quality KPI for the food industry. The next most common KPIs were the loss during process and the number of deviations. Respondents in both the pharmaceutical and food industries thought that it is important to follow the indicators that describe the quality of a product and operation. Food companies shared their KPIs and their results with their partners and relevant authorities more often than did pharmaceutical companies.

Conclusions

The results of this study showed that the food industry was slightly more advanced than the pharmaceutical industry in the utilization of the quality indicators. However, statistical significant differences exist between the pharmaceutical and food industries with regard to one quality indicator, namely, rejected batches on the one hand and in the opinion of respondents on how well quality indicators will help direct operations in the right direction on the other.

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Abbreviations

KPI:

Key performance indicator

OPEX:

Operational excellence

TQM:

Total quality maintenance

QM:

Quality management

CAPA:

Corrective and preventive action

DMAIC:

Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control

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Ethical Standards

The experiments comply with the current laws of the country in which they were performed.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Industrial Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Helsinki, Viikinkaari 5E, P.O. Box 56, Helsinki, 00014, Finland

    Marianne Torkko & Anne Mari Juppo

  2. Orion Corporation, Tengströminkatu 8, P.O. BOX 425, 20101, Turku, Finland

    Marianne Torkko

  3. Orion Corporation, Orionintie 1, P.O. Box 65, 02101, Espoo, Finland

    Anu Linna

  4. Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Helsinki, Viikinkaari 9, P.O. Box 56, 00014, Helsinki, Finland

    Nina Katajavuori

Authors
  1. Marianne Torkko
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  2. Anu Linna
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  3. Nina Katajavuori
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  4. Anne Mari Juppo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marianne Torkko.

Additional information

In this study we investigated less published quality indicators in pharmaceutical and food industry. Food industry has been chosen to get important benchmarking data from other area of industry.

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Torkko, M., Linna, A., Katajavuori, N. et al. Quality KPIs in Pharmaceutical and Food Industry. J Pharm Innov 8, 205–211 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12247-013-9159-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12247-013-9159-9

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