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back to article Product safety: don't let a crisis turn into a disaster

With Mattel recalling 18 million toys and Cadbury on the receiving end of a conviction for making and distributing unsafe chocolate, many manufacturers will be looking again at what they can do in the event of a product safety problem. What should a company do when faced with a product safety crisis? How can it handle the …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What should a company do?

    A company should remember, whenever it thinks about outsourcing/subcontracting *anything*, regardless of whether it's manufacturing, IT, call centres, or even management [1], that outsourcing may relieve them of some of the unwanted burden but it doesn't relieve them of their legal or commercial responsibilities.There may well be consequences if they choose to ignore this, as Mattel have just found out. Others besides Mattel will hopefully be having interesting discussions about whether the saving in manufacturing costs (by going Chinese or whatever) is worth the long term risk to the business.

    The "Made in China" label may start to be the modern equivalent of "Made in Hong Kong" from thirty years ago.

    [1] Howcome you never hear of management being outsourced ? Outsourcing typical "management by spreadsheet" sounds like the ideal way of "LEAN"ifying a whole layer of non-productive high-cost company overhead.

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  2. SImon Hobson Bronze badge

    Just another section in ...

    ... the Business Continuity Plan.

    You do all have a Business Continuity plan don't you ?

    Too many people think of Business Continuity as being the same as Disaster Recovery, and a good proportion of those (particularly management) then take a further step and label it all as IT ! BC and DR are about more than the building being destroyed by fire or washed away in the floods - it includes all sorts of things, and yes, that includes the subject of this article.

    A well run company will have a BC plan, it will be comprehensive, kept up to date, and all the key people will be reasonably familiar with it's contents having practiced a number of scenarios over the years. The majority (the proportion increasing with smaller size I suspect) of businesses employ a different approach to BC - can you say "crossed fingers" ?

    Over the last few months we've seen countless reports on the news of (mostly) small businesses who clearly had no BC plan, and had clearly ever given a moments thought to it. After all, why should anyone living/working on a flood plain have any reason to consider the effects of flooding !

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