Baby Formula and Assigning Blame
In 2003 I had occasion to visit a large confectioner, a manufacturer of candies, to help it select an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System. The citation is to Wikipedia, something I rarely do. In this case almost all of the other citations lead directly to specific ERP platforms, and are essentially advertisements. In this case, Wikipedia appears to be platform-independent.
As part of my interviews, I determined that the company, which I won’t identify except to say it was large and did contract manufacturing for many other companies, had recently resolved an existential crisis. Its independent testing laboratory found bacteria in several batches. An all-hands-on-deck effort had been undertaken to find the source of the bacteria. It self-reported the problem to the FDA, and provided the results of its internal investigation and the independent laboratories’ reports. It voluntarily suspended operations, which is what Abbott appears to have done with its baby formula. Its identical products could be found packaged as “house brands” across all large retailers.
It called the FDA, told the FDA of the problem, and sent in its own testing, its independent labs’ testing, the process used to determine the source of the pollution, and asked the FDA to conduct an inspection of all of its plants forthwith, even though the problem had been limited to a single plant. The FDA responded immediately, reviewed all of the company’s operations, its policies and procedures for preventing intermingling of ingredients, repeated the testing using its own independent laboratories, and the company was back in operation about two weeks later.
My client was not the confectioner, but its IT outsourcer. He knew that the incident had nearly put the company out of business because every employee or contractor with an IQ above a meal worm was called in to perform an inimitable task: analyzing thousands of data points without an ERP database. It shut down all production for weeks and paid large sums to customers for failure to deliver product on time. It scrubbed every square millimeter of multiple plants, denied anyone in management any bonuses and imposed a 20% pay cut on management.
The difference between the candy maker and Abbott? This was in 2003, and the idiot President, Bush, hadn’t recognized the potential domestic political benefits of declaring war on small business. Nor the lucrative potential in compromising his entire administration by effectively severely wounding NATO, pandering to China, Russia and North Korea, and condemning Ukraine to destruction at the hands of Russia – unless Putin decides to start a nuclear war over the matter, or use chemical weapons given Biden’s confusion on the matter.
Does anybody else remember a time when the Federal Government wasn’t weaponized against political opponents?
That is a perfect example. I don't remember the gov't weaponizing much before 9/11. I was part of a small group (military reunion) that raised money for orphanages in Vietnam and lost its charitable status for no reason in 2009. Maybe someone in IRS thought military groups were not democrats.?
I enjoy these sorts of posts but I'd hardly regard Bush as an exemplar of leadership...