Every pharmaceutical manufacturer must have and implement suitable processes for dealing with deviations from processes and quality specifications in order to continuously ensure the required quality of the products. There are many reasons for deviations. They range from quality problems in the raw materials, materials, equipment and devices used to inadequate description or implementation of the manufacturing, testing and quality assurance processes. A wide variety of reasons can lead to a backlog in the processing of deviations or deviation management. The workload associated with the processing of deviations and the associated commitment of personnel resources across all areas of the quality system can even become so great that batch-relevant deviations are not processed in time and these are not sufficiently taken into account for the release of the product batches. Supervisory authorities therefore regularly review the status and implementation of deviation management by pharmaceutical manufacturers in their inspections. This article illustrates the background and cites measures for preparing for this critical review.