Key Performance Indicators in a pharmaceutical company

[dehnad2001]

Hi everybody,
It has been a while since I started a QMS design and implementation project in a medium size pharmaceutical company. I really need some help about key performance indicators (both effectiveness and efficiency indicators) which can be applied in pharmaceutical industry.
Thank all of you in advance

[RCBeyette]

Originally Posted by dehnad2001

Hi everybody,
It has been a while since I started a QMS design and implementation project in a medium size pharmaceutical company. I really need some help about key performance indicators (both effectiveness and efficiency indicators) which can be applied in pharmaceutical industry.
Thank all of you in advance

Welcome to the Cove, dehnad!

A starting point might be to look at their key processes, the outputs and formulate the indicators from those.

[Randy]

How about...Does the drug work as advertised? Yes___ No___

Add the total Yes's and No's, compare them and there you have it.

[dehnad2001]

Originally Posted by RCBeyette

Welcome to the Cove, dehnad!

A starting point might be to look at their key processes, the outputs and formulate the indicators from those.

Thank you RCBeyette, The point is that we have defined some general effectiveness indicators for their key processes (manufacturing, QC, sales, etc), but as I mentioned they are GENERAL indicators and their senior management asks us to help them defining efficiency indicators.

[RCBeyette]

Originally Posted by dehnad2001

Thank you RCBeyette, The point is that we have defined some general effectiveness indicators for their key processes (manufacturing, QC, sales, etc), but as I mentioned they are GENERAL indicators and their senior management asks us to help them defining efficiency indicators.

Then make them more specific. I do not mean to sound unhelpful, but each industry is unique, as is each company. You have to determine what you feel makes you efficient and effective.

What does your management group feel is the difference between an effectiveness indicator and an efficiency indicator?

Personally, my organization (and others out there) have something call "Key Performance Indicators" (acronym is KPI). These track the performance of our processes...and those variables which we deem as being vital to indicating the state of our system.

We set goals or control limits for them. If the result is not within the control limits, we determine all the facts, the cause and establish actions to get the results back under control.

This is just one methodology of several implemented to keep our processes both effective and efficient.

[Ajit Basrur]

Hi dehnad.

You havent mentioned what type of dosages do you make in Pharmaceuticals. I give you some examples relating to solid dosage forms ie Key Performance Indicators which can be used in Tablets manufacturing.

As RCBeyette mentioned to study your process, have a process flow. In case of tablets, it starts with Mixing, then Granulation followed by Drying, Lubrication, Compression and finally Packaging.

You can have KPIs for Yield at the end of each stage ie. Granulation Yield, Lubrication Yield, Compression Yield and Packaging Yield as some of your indicators. Apart from these Operations parameters, you could identify for Quality, viz. "Right First Time" to reflect the status of batches passed first time over the total no of batches received. You could also think of some safety indicators viz. accidents.

Based on these type of examples, you could identify parameters in your plant. Pl let me know if you need help.

[dehnad2001]

Thank you all,
What the management team wants from efficiency indicators are financial and time based indicators. we have defined some indicators such as recall rate (after delivery), product reject rate, on-time delivery, no. of complaints, etc. all of them are effectiveness indicators. what they are insisting on is to define efficiency indicators to determine how much money and time they have invested to optimize the above effectiveness indicators.
They have a wide range of Chemotherapeutics products including tablets, capsules and vials.
Looking fwd to hearing from you all.
Tnx

[Ajit Basrur]

Dehnad,

Are you looking for Financial KPIs or Quality / Safety related KPIs ? Can you pl be very specific ?