Role of Quality Management in Pharmaceutical Development: Evidence from Islamabad and Lahore

The aim of this paper is to investigate the employee’s perceptions of the impact, of Total Quality Management (TQM), on their roles within the organization and how they perceived the effectiveness of the quality processes in Pakistan Pharmaceutical industry. The universe of this study was the employees of Pharmaceutical industry in Islamabad and Lahore. For this purpose survey method was used by using questionnaire as a tool for data collection. The results have shown that Employee Training and Development, Employee Performance, Quality Process and Team Work are significant factors with the Total Quality Management and correlated with each others. The result shows the application of TQM principles addresses some of the key challenges facing the organization. The study was faced by certain limitations and included time constraints and resources constraints which limited this research to only Islamabad and Lahore offices, of the Pharmaceutical companies. The present study found support that pharmaceutical companies faced the same difficulties with TQM implementations as experienced in other industries. These include achieving a culture of continuous improvement, overcoming a lack of trust and understanding the TQM process itself, and what they were, as a company, trying to achieve. These problems are not new and many companies have difficulties in implementing TQM. Pharmaceutical companies also followed the path of achieving a quality certification; namely, ISO 9000 accreditation, in the pursuit of excellence.