New Management style: New experiment in Management?

Merger, Indian Style Buy a Brand and Leave It Alone. Is this story a preamble of new way to manage as the world economy globalizes?

Mr. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi aka Mahatma Gandhi.” He took on Henry David Thoreau’s non-violence and civil disobedience philosophies, modified them to shake the British Empire, and delivered the “unthinkable” independence to India. He had stepped out of the sand box.

Are Tata, Essar Global, Bharat Forge, Infosys, Wipro are also stepping out of the traditional management box and creating a new management style, which combines the proven management philosophies with the wisdom of empowerment and trust giving people the power to shape their own destiny?

Acquisitions following the proven management styles result in layoffs, as cost cutting accelerates the realization of their desired return on investment. This has worked for many companies but the social and intellectual downside is enormous. It is a major disruption to the company personnel, associated communities, and its knowledge base. It is not easy to monetarize the financial value of these occurrences. Communities readjust and recover. However, the knowledge base is lost forever. Companies in the developed countries are grappling with these especially with the intellectual losses.

If the Indian companies mentioned in the article and other companies are successful with their experiment and succeed in achieving their goals, they will strengthen the social structure and win many friends. It would be a new management style for the twenty first century. It will be an amalgamation of different cultures and philosophies, a real globalization.

Heparin Contamination: effort to maximize profits?

FDA Identifies Contaminant Found in Baxter's Heparin makes an interesting story.

Let us assume that the identified contaminant, oversulfated chondroitin sulfate, appears at the same point as Heparin on chromatographic analysis. If the cost of this chemical is significantly lower than the cost of Heparin API, it presents an argument that how much of this contaminant was added to lower the total cost of the Active being shipped. This was all in an effort to increase profits. If people lost their lives, it did not matter to the API producers.

There has to be a minimum threshold below which side effects of the contaminant were not noticeable. Could it be that the API producers did not know the highest safe threshold? Since they did not know the safe threshold, stepwise increasing amounts of the contaminant were added by overzealous entrepreneurs to lower the cost and maximize their profits. Unfortunately, the recent lots the additive reached the threshold where the side effects were pronounced, some people lost their lives, and others became sick.

We can blame FDA for non-inspection, ill inspection, and Baxter for not having the necessary protocol in place. They are not to be blamed 100%.

Finding the sulfate contaminant is a case of pure adulteration. It is very similar to the pet feed contamination, where melamine was added to increase the nitrogen content of the pet food.

Low or no value additives can be added to bulk up the product hoping that no one will notice. Some very smart people are involved in these issues. They know how to use the knowledge base for profit. Greed comes into play. Unfortunately, people lost their life.

Pharma companies and regulatory agencies have to increase their due diligence and understand mindset of the people who are willing to “make a buck” at any cost.

“Quality by Analysis” cannot compete against “Quality by Design”

FDA Orders Heparin Shipments to be tested at the U. S. Border is the only choice but it is a manifestation of material failure of “quality by analysis” methods.

The explanation of “contaminant being a heparin-like molecule” begs me to ask questions. This is not a comforting explanation but seems like an attempt to placate the audience. Complete details showing the scientific details need to be in print.

Pharmaceutical industry has to implement “Quality by Design” NOW. Had the production of Heparin been done using “QBD” methods, we would not have seen the current global dilemma.

I have said repeatedly that “QBD” is based on “complete understanding” of the manufacturing process, which is the “P” of the PAT. Unless we understand the “process,” we cannot produce quality.

Based on my experiences, complete understanding the processing steps allows one to repeat the mistakes and that is where we need to be rather than playing “Monday morning quarterback.”

Drug safety, side effects, FDA, and its challenges

Recently USFDA announced "Safety First" program for the drugs that are in the market. WSJ reports, “Top Food and Drug Administration officials said this week consumers should expect to see more advisories and warnings from the agency about drug-side effects.”

It is an interesting and an intriguing program. I am not sure of its efficacy and how it will help the consumers. The side effects of drugs that are commercial are public information and available. If one is expecting that the database is going to list every and all side effects, it is not going to do it and is going to come short of what everyone will expect.

We need to revisit and understand what the drugs are. Drugs are toxic specialty/fine chemicals. Fine/specialty chemicals, to a chemist are organic molecules that are mostly heterocyclic ring/s with nitrogen, sulfur, halogen, phosphorous and/or oxygen incorporated in the ring/s and/or in their side chains. It is very likely that they have unsaturated bonds.

Drug evolution, development, and regulatory review process leads to the introduction of many drugs. I am sure during the development process close attention is paid to how the drug will interact with human body. There are checks and balances in place and only the drugs that have no or minimum ill effects enter the approval progression process. I do not believe that the interaction with every possible drug on humans take can be identified and quantified.

Developers and/or the regulators do not know or have where-with-alls of how an unsaturated complex organic molecule is going to interact with another unsaturated complex molecule/s and acid/alkali of the human body. I do not know if anyone speculate and/or can conjecture how the molecules will breakdown and possibly recombine to create a new complex molecule in the human body. Only way to make a scientific conclusion is to actually study the effect of combination of drugs.

Since the interaction of the drugs is happening in the human body, the resulting chemicals cannot be sampled and studied for their good and/or bad effects. We all know that the human body is a well-controlled reaction system. Every bad effect on human body is manifested by an illness, which is called side effect.

Why did USFDA take on this task? They are the “FOOD AND DRUG SAFETY PATROL” and this additional task is being taken on to placate its critics. Everyone eventually is going to treat FDA database as gospel and indicator of all ill effects. It is going to come short on expectations and FDA again is going to be blamed.

In addition, I do not know how they will carry out this enormous task when it does not have sufficient money and/or the manpower to higher priority tasks. This task is impossible at best. It is a loose-loose situation at best.