The Recall Fiasco

Over the past one year, there have been so many product recalls, spanning various facets of our consumer life, its intimidating to think about the safety of anything we use in our modern lives. In the last one hundred or so years, a multitude of products have entered our daily lives to make us lead a product-centric and contemporocentric lives. But in the past two decades, the escalation has been incredible. People across the World are now regularly bombarded with products and advertisements hundreds of times, everyday. Our lives get shorter as the margins of companies get longer. And as the cycle of innovation reduces, more and more products hit the street. Subliminal and explicit messages pollute our sub-conscious minds making us gullible customers controlled by a puppet master. Someone is selling something constantly, creating an endless feed of commerce interspersed within the already chaotic daily schedules of men, women and children. Here is a fact of modern life, we live in a society which cares more about the shelf life of a product, than the shelf life of a person. Product > Person.

McDonald's, about whom investors have been salivating in the last few years, recalled glasses it started selling in conjunction with Dream Works' franchise flick, Shrek IV. While the ogre is pretty damn popular with kids, his green color has come to signify the greed of cross-product placements and movie-product tie-ins. I know how crazy kids can get about these tie-ins, as in their gullible age they associate everything sold out there with the chirpy, fun-loving nature of the ogre. My nephew used to pester me to get these toys in our visits to the not-so-friendly neighborhood McDonald's. I was amazed at how cunning these companies are in their reach-out efforts to the younger sections. Even kids are neatly market segmented and psycho-graphically profiled. The McDonald's glasses apparently (recalled in the millions, as there are 12 million glasses in the market now), have a lethal chemical cadmium (a carcinogen no less) inside them. Kids drink the already nasty colas (Coke and Pepsi found traces of pesticides in their formulas recently in India) in place of water in a glass made with cadmium and down a hamburger made from a cow that was fed some more lethal hormones. Looks like the entire value chain of our lives is polluted. Will our next generation of men and women turn to aliens in their lifetime, being fed such trash? No wonder the folks of our parent generation have more energy and mental stamina than the kids these days. Fortunately, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission found the McDonald's cadmium-tainted glasses in time to even launch a recall. What if it wast found? What about all those other products floating in the market now with some lethal ingredients in their DNA? Where are the testing standards to stop corporations putting carcinogens into our daily lives? How come investors don't cry for safety in products instead of ever-increasing returns? In their eagerness and hastiness to to get tainted products to market in time when their movies hit the screens, the DreamWorks', McDonalds' and Coke's of the world will do anything. They will even allow their manufacturing (usually China, cause its cheap, never mind the quality) facilities to get tainted with carcinogens. Just like all those crackers and peanut butters etc recalled last year as someone found salmonella in some of these products. Essentially, one of us should put ourselves in peril or even die so others will know how bad these products are. Unfortunately, modern industrial production systems are so integrated and so large scale, its impossible to test every product in time to check if everything is safe or not. Please remember the toys from China that were filled with toxic substances. These profit-seeking corporations will not stop at anything for a little extra growth and a nicer quarterly number. Not even the toys of our kids. We were not safe by what we drank or ate and now our kids are not safe by what they play with and the glasses from which they drink their colas.

Update on June 25th. Kellogg recalled some 28 million boxes of its breakfast cereal, Apple Jacks, Corn Pops, Froot Loops and Honey Smacks cereals, due to a "bad smell" coming from the package. Interestingly, the news item only reveals so much about the recall but adds "shares of Kellogg unchanged at end of trading". Look at the apathy of this situation. While we are worrying about the life/death of human beings here, the conclusion of news items talks about the frigging stock price of the company? Is that the only raison d'etre of modern existence?

Toyota, whose production systems and kanban/kaizan processes cause many managements gurus to jizz in their pants, recalled millions of its cars recently. Why? Because the floor mats were disabling drivers to hit brakes or accelerate the cars automatically. There are problems with gas pedals. Imagine sitting in a car that you cant control. Imagine trying to stop the car when you see pedestrians, but instead the car starts racing. All these decades, Toyota, an otherwise smart company because of its focus on innovation and hybrid technologies, was praised high for its ability to advance production processes through just in time (JIT) manufacturing and constant improvement yada yada yada. JIT practice is not a panacea, while it can save inventory costs, it puts a strain on human beings to do things in the last minute, it clogs traffic and finally it responds weakly to variance in demand. I see a link between these methods like JIT and other fancy Japanese words to the recent recalls. Management consultants would like you to believe otherwise, because they sell crappy ideas with fancy words and make fancy bucks doing so. In its quest to increase market share, Toyota might have sent an unfinished product to the market without proper testing. Is this the constant improvement they were doing for last two decades? Most of the major Toyota brands like Prius and others were recalled. Even Lexus, which prides itself in its quality has recalls. Please remember the ads of Lexus extolling its virtues and how cool you are as a person just because you drive a Lexus. Well, if you stay alive driving one that is. And this week Chrysler announced that it is recalling nearly 600,000 Jeep Wranglers and Chrysler/Dodge because of a possible brake fluid leak from front inner fender liners causing friction and a possible loss of brakes not to mention the fire hazard the wiring can cause. We were not safe crossing the road but now we are not safe inside the cars.

Johnson & Johnson, loved by many B school professors who constantly give the cliched example of Tylenol recall in the 70s, recalled Children's Tylenol and Other Children's Medicines in the last few weeks. batches of regular and extra-strength Tylenol, children's Tylenol, eight-hour Tylenol, Tylenol arthritis, Tylenol PM, children's Motrin, Motrin IB, Benadryl Rolaids, Simply Sleep, and St. Joseph's aspirin have been recalled. If you ate them, J&J is sorry about it. Sorry, we had some bacteria in our manufacturing plants and this bacteria (which is resistant to anti-biotic by the way) seeped into the tablets your kids take. I ask, why is there not a revolution already in the streets demanding the heads of people responsible for these things? Is it just enough to start a boycott J&J or Toyota page on FaceBook? Does J&J know about something called testing? According to FDA, problems with these drugs surfaced as early as 2008, but no one bothered to follow up. What kind of manufacturing standards do these companies use? Is it just enough to put anything out, as soon as can? It does not even matter if the consumer dies using the product? Companies don't care about this, because Wall St., does not care. All investors care is about the return on their investment, it does not matter if their kids are taking contaminated medicines of a company in which their parents are investors. Who cares if a few children get sick or even die when the company has been consistently giving returns and meeting quarterly expectations? We were not safe using these drugs in the first place, because they cure the symptoms not the disease. Now, we have to think ten times before we load our kids with Motrin and Tylenol and who knows, maybe J&J will come up with another medicine to cure those who are affected by the contaminated Tylenol. Now, that would be a great business idea, which would make those investors drop their pants and dance.

HP, another paragon of virtues as extolled by gurus, recalled thousands of laptop batteries last week cause they were a fire hazard. Simply put, you or I could be blown to bits by just using a laptop. Why do we need weapons of mass destruction, if we have batteries like that? Why not install them batteries into laptops and gift them to our enemies? Now, since I bought a HP laptop in 2007 (recall period, August of 2007 and July of 2008), my heart skipped a beat and I hastily checked my battery serial number. No, its not in the recall. But yes, the battery overheats like crazy causing either my clunky Windows OS to shutdown, or drive the fan nuts or barbecue my thighs or all. CPSC, the primary safety watchdog for technology in the United States, can be contacted if consumers have problems but what about those laptops that were sent to places like India where finding someone who cares is as hard as finding a snowball in hell? It does not matter right, because HP already booked those laptops into their sales figures, which is reflected in its share price and investors already made their returns. Why care if a few people's lives are jeopardized because their laptops have suddenly turned to landmines. We are not safe by using our "productivity" enhancing gadgets.

We might have to strip ourselves naked and go live in the jungle. Might could be right there but at least there is honesty in such a killing. The above named corporations should be ashamed of themselves for the fact that they will go to any length in their naked pursuit of profit. Investors could care less if these companies make lethal products that masquerade as kids toys or cars or laptops. I don't believe that only a few people who are exposed to these products and endanger their lives will pay the price along with their families and friends. I believe that we are all doomed as long as we think and act like sheep (read consumers). Nobody will question these companies because they are too big. A few heads could fall, business will be back to normal but processes will not change. Investors will only clamor for quarterly performance. Soul searching will not happen and our cars, glasses, laptops, burgers, medicines, and lives will keep getting contaminated until the last day. We will all eventually meet our maker, and hey, I have my defects but I don't want to be recalled just yet. But I'm sick and tired about these companies and their cadmium-tainted souls.