Can You Rank Suppliers in Categories Other Than Critical or Noncritical?

In order to determine the rank of a supplier it is important to take the risk-based approach. The FDA really promotes that as well as what they call “the least burdensome process”. Whether it is supplier qualification, computer system validation, cleaning validation, or process validation it is essential to take that risk based approach. Evaluate the risk to the product, the risk to patient safety, and all the safety quality identity purity potency.
 For example, a supplier of glass vials you will use for the final packaging of your biologics product is a much greater risk than the supplier doing your pest control.  A risk-based approach will allow you to determine the risk classification. Ranking a supplier depends on its criticality to your particular function for product. You could rank them within critical or non-critical but then within each you could have various time frames as far as on site or desk audits are concerned.
 Any associated activities whether it is frequency of auditing, frequency of validation, or periodic review should be scaled appropriately based on the risk. We suggest listening to the webinar on incorporating risks into the audit process. We are considered to be a thought leader in the life science industry and we are very eager to share our information on webinars.
USDM Life Sciences has a combination of over 100 years in regulatory compliance, Quality Assurance, Quality Systems and auditing. USDM’s auditors in the Global Audits Practice Team perform audits on Pharmaceutical, Biotech and Medical Device companies in the US and abroad.