Pharmaceuticals:

Herbert Kaplan

The 1990s have marked a decade of significant change for quality control in the pharmaceutical industry. New governmental regulations in the US have prompted capital expenditures for automated inspection equipment that is increasingly replacing human inspectors -- and doing so more accurately.
In 1992, the average pharmaceutical recall cost $1.5 million for lost sales, production, disposal and notification. A year later, the FDA published new regulations about labeling and inspection. The regulations allowed continued use of human inspectors, but they indicated a strong preference for automated inspection, such as machine vision systems.