Drugmakers are revamping factories to save money and avoid production mishaps.Despite its high-tech image, the pharmaceutical industry is less adept at manufacturing than you might expect. One recent horror story was Schering-Plough Corp.'s (SGP ) slip-up on asthma inhalers. In 1999 and 2000, the company recalled 59 million units because it couldn’t prove that the inhalers contained the active ingredient. The Food & Drug Administration, meanwhile, has found hundreds of quality violations at other companies. The woes are a symptom of a deeper problem: factory processes so antiquated that companies typically can’t even pinpoint the causes of snafus. “Manufacturing has been the poor stepchild of the pharmaceutical industry,” says Jeffrey T. Macher of Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.
