The Role Of Project Management in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Regardless of the service or product delivered by the industries, project management is used in all industries. Every firm wants their project to be successful. Hence, nothing stands distant about pharmaceutical project management. The pharmaceutical project management accords with medical drugs, preparation, sale, or use. The project manager of the pharmaceutical industry plays a vital role in all the phases of project management in the pharmaceutical industry. The pharmaceutical project manager is expected to have a qualification in pharmacy project management with good experience and skills but it’s not mandatory.

Revolution of the latest technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data has been emerging in all the pharmaceutical industries. There is a tremendous increase in the competition as IT arrives into the picture together with marketing. So, to compete and sustain in the business, project management is a vital process. Research, testing, and marketing of new medicines are the biggest challenges that have been faced by pharmaceutical firms. These companies need to update themselves with time and accept changes for planning their projects. It is essential to have project management for all the pharmaceutical industries.

Below we have explained the five phases of pharmaceutical project management

Initiation

In the initiation phase, the project’s scope is being discussed. The details of the requirement will be shared, explained, and talked over. The competitive products will be compared with the roughly calculated pharmacy product. Concerning the given requirements, the project’s feasibility is checked. Various business cases will be studied from previous experiences. The advice from the experts is taken before commencing the real project. All the data needed for the project’s initialization before planning will be gathered in this phase.

In the initiation stage, the following points are to be dealt with:

• Business case – It defines the need of the project.
• Project structure – It defines the structure and the execution cycle of the project.
• Feasibility – It defines the ratio of success of the project.
• Team – To hire, then train, and utilize the skilled resources.
• Review – The process of initiation and the progress till finishing of the project are reviewed.
• Project Office – It’s the location from which the assistant team and the project manager work together.

Planning

It’s an essential method to achieve the targets. Analysis and planning are accomplished with the help of the data given from the initiation stage. One single plan will never stand and hence it is needed to build multiple backup plans. For the allotment of tasks, pharmaceutical project managers emphasize highly on resource planning. Managers will schedule meetings with the stakeholders and the account team for cost budgeting. The budget estimated is approximated with the actual budget. The estimated price will be tried to be lessened when compared to the real budget. Once the analysis is completed for all the activities, they will be assigned to particular resources as the task by the project manager. Knowing the experience and skills of the members, the project manager will assign the work to the specific team. A project manager should also ensure that the resources are adequate for all those activities that are related to the project’s scope. Even uncertain risks are considered by the project managers of the pharmaceutical industry and thus they do the planning.

Execution?

Execution of any planning begins in the execution phase. The manager prepares the activity chart which will strictly be followed concerning time and resources. Deadlines will be followed as per the conference in the planning stage. The activities involve commencing from scientific research, management, plant operation, lab testing from converting the pharmacologically active substance into productive medicines, IT and marketing along with finance and accounting. The activities will be executed in the form of tasks and then handled by the respective teams which are under the pharmaceutical project manager’s control. Daily team reports will be sent by the team to their project manager. The manager will review the report and then maintain the track record. The project manager even schedules the weekly meetings to discuss the project’s status with the leads of the individual team. Necessary steps will be taken to resolve the concerns if the manager sees that the tasks aren’t going to be finished as intended according to the activities. Uncertain changes in the flow of the project will also be handled by the project manager.

Manage and Control

Until the last stage of the completion, the project needs monitoring. The budget allocated to the project is controlled by the pharmaceutical project manager as established in the planning stage. The project manager must deliver good quality projects but within the set deadline concerning the resources and budget. There will be maximum possibilities where indefinite changes might occur so the activities of the project need to be controlled and monitored. We can find a lot of cases where many projects, although booming at the initial stage, failed after the execution as there was a lack of control and monitoring over the project.

Below are the factors that are required to be controlled:

• Scope
• Schedule
• Cost
• Communication
• Uncertain changes
• Quality
• Procurements
• Stakeholder engagements
• Risk

Closure

After the completion of the above-mentioned four phases, the next and final step is closure. After the project delivers the quality product within the deadline concerning the set budget and resources then the project will be declared as complete. Even if the project succeeds or fails in this phase, some learning will be taken as the conclusion. An entire project is never perfect meeting all the requirements. If some elements are lacking in the present project version then the future enhancement will be added in the system’s next version. The project’s documentation will also be maintained by the pharmaceutical manager for future reference.

Hence, one can conclude that for all the pharmaceutical industries project management is vital. Learning the roles and responsibilities of the pharmaceutical project manager is also essential. The pharmaceutical manager is a PMP-certified manager and a pharmaceutical engineer.?As management is considered as the art of making things done with available resources and time, it can be figured out and the skills could be developed through the management courses. Shrilearning provides the fairest PMP training course to assist professionals in the pharmaceutical industry. Shrilearning has given rise to numerous landmarks in this career. This is a knocking chance for all those who are willing to be experts in this industry.