Product contamination is simply not an option for pharmaceutical drug companies. If a defective medicine gets to a patient, the consequences are catastrophic and in the worst cases, fatal.
End user safety is always the main driver for drug companies to ensure product quality. Though, these companies also want to avoid costly recalls and investigations if the affected product gets to market—investigations and lawsuits that could drag on endlessly for years and continue to rise into billions of dollars.
Most manufacturing quality experts agree that the cost of a defect will typically increase tenfold at every major processing point, unless the defect is caught early on. Once a defect is taken to production, the cost to the business multiplies ten times, through product rework, reprocessing or investigation time.
Costs exponentially go up by 100 if the defective product then gets distributed, requiring a detailed recall and investigation process, on top of the potentially devastating consequences of harming a patient. The clearest path to containing these costs is to detect defects before production starts—via an incoming inspection or routine monitoring process.
