Measure the real workload
Reconstruct the workload per item and per test from control frequencies and standards — and compare workload against available capacity.
Industrial management · Quality control
Growing volumes: hire or optimize?
When production accelerates, the quality-control lab's workload climbs — often faster than the volumes themselves. The natural reflex: hire. But before adding headcount, one question pays off more: where does control genuinely add value? Field experience at a French pharmaceutical contract manufacturer (CDMO).
+76%
more verification hours in a year, when batches grew "only" +34%. The control workload doesn't track volumes: it outpaces them.
Hiring to keep up with the workload means reproducing the existing setup at a larger scale — including the controls that add no value. Managing the workload means first measuring it, segmenting it by risk, then deciding where to optimize and where to reinforce. Hiring then becomes a choice, not a headlong rush.
The real problem
The control workload grows faster than volumes.
New, more complex products, verifications that pile up, documentation reviews that stretch out: the lab's workload doesn't follow a simple rule of three. It runs away. Hiring keeps things afloat for a while, but it doesn't address the cause — and it shifts the bottleneck toward training, supervision and batch release.
The approach
Measure, segment, decide.
Before adding capacity, inform the decision with facts.
Segment by risk
Cross-reference supplier, item and test risk to separate what must stay in-house from what can be streamlined or delegated.
Decide: optimize, then size
First recover capacity through controlled-risk streamlining — then size headcount against the residual workload that's genuinely needed.
What you recover
Capacity, before hiring.
Analyzing the workload by risk reveals where to act, and in what order.
- 8%
- of workload recoverable right away (direct delegation).
- 56%
- accessible via supplier qualification: the medium-term plan.
- 36%
- incompressible: that's where headcount should go.
The most telling signal remains the explosion in verification hours (+76%): often the symptom of overly heavy review rules. Streamlining the review to the right level of risk frees up as much capacity as a hire — without the cost or the delay.
Go further
Tackle the workload at the root.
Quality control
Streamline QC controls
The risk-analysis method: 3 indices and a decision grid.
Read the article → SuppliersDelegate to the supplier (CoA)
The biggest opportunity: qualify to delegate without losing oversight.
Read the article → ConsultingOperational performance
Assess the workload and free up capacity, from €5k.
See the approach →Frequently asked questions
Workload, capacity and growth.
Because new, more complex items, longer methods and heavier documentation reviews add to the mere increase in the number of batches. In our field experience, +34% batches translated into +56% hours — and +76% on verification alone.
Optimize first, size second. Recovering the capacity lost in low-value controls (through risk analysis) avoids hiring just to reproduce inefficiency. Hiring then focuses on the workload that's genuinely incompressible.
By reconstructing the workload per item and per test (control frequency × time standard), then comparing it against available capacity. Beware of theoretical standards, often far from the real workload: the assessment must make them objective.
No, as long as the streamlining rests on a documented risk analysis and high-stakes controls are kept in place. It's actually the expected logic: proportion the control effort to the real risk, and document it.
Make growth a choice, not a constraint.
Let's quantify your lab's workload and the recoverable capacity before any hiring.