Survey Finds Quality Management and ERP Software Integration Critical to Halt Contaminated Batches at Pharmaceutical Organizations

Holmdel, NJ Apr 27, 2011 – Forward-thinking pharmaceutical organizations that have integrated their quality management solutions with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are commonly leveraging these integrations to place batches of manufactured products on hold, according to new data revealed today. The survey of more than 100 pharmaceutical manufacturing professionals, conducted by Sparta Systems, Inc., the maker of TrackWise® quality management software and the market leader in enterprise quality and compliance management solutions, found that 65 percent of the companies integrating these key systems use the resulting functionality to automatically place batches on hold, a critical function that ensures incidents in the manufacturing process do not effect the products ultimately delivered to the market.
More and more, organizations are implementing best-of-breed quality management software solutions to automate vital quality processes, as well as integrating these systems with ERP solutions to ensure organization-wide management of these processes. According to the survey data from Sparta Systems:
• Seventy-five percent of organizations that have purchased dedicated quality management software either have integrated or plan to integrate it with their ERP system
• Of those organizations that have already undertaken such an integration, more than 70 percent view the ability to more quickly find the appropriate batch information after identifying non-conformances – and to put a batch on hold once the non-conformance is identified – as key benefits of the integration
• Other major benefits of integration include: ability to maintain one master product list instead of having multiple product lists in different systems (82 percent); ability to more efficiently track customer complaints back to the original batch (59 percent); and the ability to correlate non-conformances and customer complaints back to specific products and batches (47 percent)
“It’s clear from this survey data that pharmaceutical companies are seeing tremendous advantages in integrating their purpose-built quality management and ERP software systems,” said Tim Mohn, Industry Principal, Sparta Systems. “The best quality management solutions on the market allow for seamless integration with these systems, and forward-thinking organizations are clearly realizing this. In doing so, they’re helping to ensure that the processes used to manufacture their products are streamlined across the organization, while these products are delivered to market with complete assurance of their safety for public consumption.”
Click here to learn more about the enterprise integration capabilities built into Sparta Systems’ TrackWise Enterprise Quality Management Software.