It would seem that something as simple as a toy or a drinking glass could not cause major safety concerns for consumers. Guess again!
Last Friday June 4th The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a voluntary recall of Twelve Million Shrek drinking glasses that are tainted with Cadmium.
According to Wikipedia Cadmium is a chemical element with the symbol Cd and atomic number 48. The soft, bluish-white metal is chemically similar to the two other metals in group 12, zinc and mercury.
In extreme cases of exposure to cadmium fumes the result can be flu like symptoms including chills, fever, and muscle ache sometimes referred to as “the cadmium blues.”
The company that produced the glasses has been doing so for major companies for years. This reinforces the fact that procurement professionals can not get comfortable in their jobs and that consumer safety, product safety and environment safety are as much a part of the procurement knowledge workers job today as the relatively simple task of picking up the phone to place the next order. Additionally and maybe more importantly, manufacturers can not just assume that the raw materials they are using are safe either. Their buyers need to be as vigilant in terms of what has changed in the supply chain as their customers. If we trace products from the farm to the table so to speak these type of issues don’t need to occur.
Discipline, process and traceability are the pillars of a good procurement team.
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