Pharmaceutical Quality and Good Manufacturing Practice

In its most general context, the concept of good denotes that conduct which is to be or should be preferred when posed with a choice between a set of possible actions. Good is generally considered to be the opposite of evil. The concept is of interest in the study of morality, ethics, religion and philosophy, and the specific meaning and etiology of the term and its associated translations among ancient and contemporary languages has varied substantially in its inflected meaning depending on circumstances of place, history, religious context and philosophical context.

Manufacturing is the production of merchandise for use or sale using labour and machines, tools, chemical and biological processing, or formulation. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale. Such finished goods may be sold to other manufacturers for the production of other, more complex products, such as aircraft, household appliances, furniture, sports equipment or automobiles, or sold to wholesalers, who in turn sell them to retailers, who then sell them to end users and consumers.