Manufacturing and Quality Management
Two key factors in establishing the safety and quality of a cosmetic product are Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) and quality-related systems to ensure every item is made for its intended use.
The degree of control and oversight starts with the product’s ingredients, manufacturing equipment, batch quality test methods, stability testing, and final release. At each step in the process, quality oversight remains central to the processes. For this reason, a Quality Management System (QMS) is put in place to ensure there is a comprehensive structure.
While QMS can vary from company to company, central themes include continuous improvement, defined business practices, management responsibility, and systems to monitor and control practices, along with change management.
Independent but vital to ensure the best product, is a practice known as Quality Risk Management (QRM). This is a systematic process for assessment, control, communication, and review of risks to the quality of the product through its life.
In summary, GMPs, a QMS and a QRM are integral to ensuring a product made is of the highest quality and that it’s safe to use, easily identified, and made at the right concentrations or efficacy.
GMP
Current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMPs) are a broad-based set of internationally recognized guidelines used by companies to ensure adequate systems and controls are in place to make a cosmetic or pharmaceutical product. These systems track many things, such as the facilities, equipment, personnel, quality systems, storage, and transport. How a company creates written procedures to ensure they remain compliant to cGMPs is different within every organization. What’s important is there are guidelines and written procedures, policies, and instructions that must be followed to ensure the best quality product is produced for the consumer.
Quality Control
A subset of the cGMPs involves quality control. Quality control (QC) is different from quality assurance (QA). QC is a set of activities for ensuring quality in products; QA focuses on processes. QC-related activities focus on identifying defects in the actual products produced. QC aims to identify (and correct) defects in the finished product. Quality control, therefore, is a reactive process. The goal of QC is to identify defects after a product is developed and before it is released. Quality Control tries to find and eliminate sources of quality problems through tools and equipment so that customer requirements are continually met.
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