Exploring Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) [Podcast]

Time to pay attention to good manufacturing practices!

Importers with suppliers over in Asia may benefit from adopting GMPs (Good Manufacturing Practices). What are they? How are they useful for managing and improving the performance of suppliers in countries like China? How do they fit in with quality audits, social compliance audits, and others?

The basics are always a good starting point for any supplier management and development plan and GMPs represent the basic activities that you need suppliers to be doing well and that can assess them on.

Therefore, this episode aims to give you a solid introduction to GMPs and how you can set up your own to help guide your suppliers to do an even better job in future.

Just hit the play button to start listening..!

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🎧 Exploring Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) 🎧

Here’s a summary of what’s in the episode:

✅ A quick summary of what good manufacturing practices are.

✅ Why product types where safety and/or quality are key concerns particularly benefit from GMPs.

✅ Some similarities between GMPs and ISO 9001.

✅ Why focusing on the practical basics is a good way to spur Asian suppliers to improve as it’s easy to measure.

✅ Are GMPs included in a manufacturing agreement?

✅ The kinds of principles that may be included in a list of GMPs for general consumer products, such as: Material storage and handling. Segregation of conforming vs non-conforming material. Production equipment maintenance. Staff training plan and when they’re put to work. QC plan. Planning ahead to avoid excess inventory being made and stored to save money. Industry-specific elements, such as CNC machine programs being kept updated, or material purity being checked for die casting.

✅ The difference between process audits and GMPs.

✅ What the USFDA GMP for medical devices includes and why.

✅ A closer look at possible food product GMP.s which tend to focus on hygiene.

✅ A list of considerations for importers who are getting started with implementing GMPs, including: Listing the basics you need your suppliers to be capable of following or delivering at a high standard. Considering your objectives and scope. If you’re concerned mainly about how materials are handled and manufacturing is done, then implementing GMPs is appropriate, but if you go need to go deeper into a supplier’s capability then a quality system and/or social compliance audit may be relevant.
Brainstorm and develop a GMP checklist, organizing it by category. Audit based on the checklist and improve it over time. If you work over different product categories, the GMP checklist may need product-specific subsets added to it, too.

Keep reading about good manufacturing practices here.

Read these posts:

• What Are Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs)?
• Do Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) Audits Drive Improvement?
• Understanding the Basics of Food GMP
• Food safety standards: ISO 22001, HACCP, GMP

Also, if you need help with auditing suppliers now, check out our range of factory audits provided for you across Asia.

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Have you already created and used GMPs with your suppliers? How did this work out? Any experiences or thoughts to share?

Please share them in the comments.

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