MasterControl (Salt Lake CIty, UT) reports 90 new customers and growing adoption of connected quality and manufacturing software as CEO David Edwards emphasizes product execution, customer feedback and practical AI tools for life sciences companies.
Salt Lake City, Utah October 14, 2026
MasterControl added 90 customers in 2026 through mid-October and reported approximately 20% growth in annual recurring revenue for its Manufacturing Excellence (Mx) product over the past 12 months, according to an announcement released at its Masters Summit 2026 "All Together Now" that is taking place October 13-15 at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Salt Lake City.
For CEO David Edwards, the growth comes with a practical responsibility: making sure the company's expanding software offerings deliver what customers expect.
In an interview with TechBuzz at the summit, Edwards described prioritization as a central focus of his leadership. MasterControl has plenty of ideas for new products and capabilities, he said. The immediate task is completing current commitments while preparing for the next problems customers need help solving.
“Our customers expect that we are pushing ourselves to constantly be better,” Edwards said.
Connecting quality and manufacturing
MasterControl serves more than 1,200 companies worldwide, primarily in life sciences and other regulated industries. Its products help organizations manage quality processes, manufacturing operations and equipment through Quality Excellence (Qx), Manufacturing Excellence (Mx) and Asset Excellence (Ax).
The company said most new customers this year adopted its quality software, while 15 chose more than one MasterControl product. Sonablate HIFU deployed the full Qx, Mx and Ax suite.
Manufacturing customers increasingly purchased quality software alongside it. Of the 15 new manufacturing customers MasterControl added this year, 12 also adopted its quality solutions. The company attributes that pattern to demand for digital production records connected to quality processes.
New customers named in the announcement include Alfresa Corporation, Amber Therapeutics, Bespak, Biotech Vision Care, Care Access, Cohance Lifesciences, Glatt Pharmaceutical Services, LSLHealthcare, Pharmavite, Revlon and Vero Biotech. MasterControl also reported renewing its existing contract with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“Life sciences manufacturers are under more pressure than ever to move faster without compromising quality or compliance, and they're telling us they can't get there with disconnected systems,” Edwards said in the announcement.
The practical connection is between what happens during production and the quality work surrounding it. A problem documented in a quality system can be more useful to reviewers when it is linked to the relevant manufacturing record.
“From a regulatory standpoint alone, being able to have a nonconformance or quality event linked directly to a batch record is extremely helpful,” Allison Gentile, director of pharmacy services and regulatory affairs at Pine Pharmaceutical, said in the release. “Everything is in one spot when our batch release team is preparing a drug to release.”
An operating perspective
Although Edwards came into MasterControl on the sales side, his background also includes operations management, manufacturing and customer service. Before joining the company, he said, he had managed factories and commercial teams, giving him experience with the functions MasterControl's customers oversee.
That background made selling its software feel less like presenting a product and more like working through familiar business problems. The approach depended on understanding what a customer needed to accomplish and determining how MasterControl could help.
After more than nine years at the company, Edwards now applies that perspective across the organization. He described accountability not primarily as punishment for missed goals, but as an environment where colleagues make commitments, keep them and can depend on one another.
He also emphasized acknowledging problems alongside celebrating successes. In the interview, Edwards said he had told summit attendees that a product launched a couple of years earlier still needed work to match the vision presented to customers. He described that candor as part of improving execution without losing the company's respect for people.
What customers want from the platform
For one SCA Pharma customer, Krunal Pastagia, attending the summit, the priorities were concrete: easier administration, preserving established workflows and finding peers who had already worked through similar transitions.
Pastagia, who works in IT quality and regulated systems, said SCA had used MasterControl for more than seven years. Their responsibilities include granting access, adjusting user roles as training progresses and making workflow changes following quality approval.
Having used MasterControl at a previous employer, Pastagia found it approachable. That assessment came with relevant experience: a background in IT and other software used in regulated settings. He also described opportunities to reduce repetitive work. When a manager leaves, for example, they wanted a simpler way to reassign that person's direct reports rather than changing each employee's profile individually. They also wanted guidance on carrying established workflows into another MasterControl offering without rebuilding years of configuration. Pastagia's broader concern was preserving work already done while making the next transition easier.
The same thinking shaped his expectations for the conference. Halfway through the first day, Pastagia had already found value in meeting other customers. But he said he could benefit by having more advance help identifying relevant sessions and people facing similar implementation challenges. Rather than relying on chance encounters, he suggested that customer success managers help connect attendees by industry, goals or the systems they use.
When TechBuzz relayed that suggestion to Edwards, he welcomed it. “I think it's a great idea. I think it's definitely something we could look at,” he said. Edwards said networking and sharing practices were already goals of the summit, while acknowledging that more organized introductions could help.
AI aimed at quality workflows
MasterControl's announcement also detailed increased use of Quality Event Management (QEM). Customers launched more than 250,000 quality events through the product over the past two years, including more than 150,000 in 2026 through the announcement. The company reported growth exceeding 70% this year, although the release did not specify the comparison period.
The events include deviations, non-conformances and corrective and preventive actions, commonly called CAPAs. They are the records and processes organizations use to investigate problems and manage corrective work.
Two AI tools released this year address tasks within that environment.
SOP Analyzer, made generally available in January, checks standard operating procedures against regulatory requirements, flags potential compliance gaps and suggests improvements, according to MasterControl. The company says it can shorten update cycles from days to hours.
Event Summarizer, launched in April within QEM, generates summaries of ongoing deviations, CAPAs and non-conformances. Reviewers and approvers can use those summaries to understand an event's context, while retaining the ability to review, edit and refine the generated text.
Both tools run on MasterControl's Advanced Data and Process Technology ADAPT Platform, which the company says was developed in alignment with ISO 42001 standards. That description is not a claim of certification. The performance claims are MasterControl's; the announcement did not provide an independent evaluation of time savings or accuracy.
In the interview, Edwards argued that AI becomes especially useful when paired with a system of record containing the data a business already depends on. For regulated manufacturers, he said, that opportunity also requires attention to compliance and protecting customer information.
For now, his stated priority is to execute on current products before adding further solutions to the platform. The summit conversations illustrated both sides of that work: a company pursuing broader adoption, and customers looking for specific improvements that make their own responsibilities easier to carry out.
Learn more at www.mastercontrol.com.
