In the ARIZONA REPUBLIC today in a small corner of the business section there was a blurb in the Nation & World section titled Product Safety. The sub title of the four paragraph article was Toy sellers say suppliers will meet U.S. standards.
The good news is that retail leaders such as Wal-Mart, Target and Toys “R” Us are behind actions taken by the House and Senate to overhaul the Consumer Product Safety Commission. These actions will require suppliers to meet new standards that limit the amount of lead and other metals in toys and children’s products. I’m not sure if I like the term limit, but any step forward is better than continuing to do the same old thing.
Companies that provide software and applications that are part of automating the procurement process, also need to step up and make sure that their tools support these changes to the greatest extent possible and provide knowledge ware that interacts with both regulatory agencies and suppliers to insure product safety as more new sources of supply and new products enter the supply chain on a daily basis.
Action that software suppliers can take may include but are not limited to:
- Providing alert data on a daily basis as to product recalls and safety warnings.
- Trace warnings back to the original source of supply automatically.
- Require that suppliers meet required safety certifications to participate in their database.
- Provide a regular purge of suppliers that do not comply.
- Adhere to a strict RFI process for new suppliers being added to databases.
- Rate suppliers that are offered to retailers as new sources of supply.
- Monitor regulatory agencies for new standards and include them in the database.
This is only a start, but in order to insure the safety of our families it is our social responsibility as business partners to support our retailers efforts.
I’m sure glad we don’t have to worry about lead in pencils any more.
Ron
