The Wal-Mart Weekly: Taking ownership of quality control and product support

Too often in modern times, all of us make things that should be simple way too complex. Employers, employees, layers of management, email, phone calls, faxes, responsibilities -- life has become incredible complex in the business (and retail) world. On August 28th, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) issued a complete recall on two Simplicity Bassinet items. By, August 31st, any logical person would have thought that the recalled items had been pulled from the shelves of all retailers that carried the products.

Yet, as reported by a local television station in Phoenix, the affected products were on Wal-Mart shelves on September 2nd. That's more than four full days after the recall was announced. What could have taken the world's more powerful retailer such a long time to remove product(s) from shelves that has been the cause of two infant deaths? It's really hard to say, but my educated guess is that the bureaucracy from Wal-Mart's quality department to the "spider web" of stores across the U.S. was at play here.

If the retailer has an "urgent" email or phone call hotline for recalls of this nature, it sure didn't work this time around. So, the question is this: does Wal-Mart have a process to communicate this type of information to its stores immediately, and is there a closed loop on any action deemed necessary to ensure compliance with a recall like this? If the retailer has no process for a scenario of this type, I would be flabbergasted. If it does and the process was not followed by some stores across the country, what was the breakdown?

Although most regular Wal-Mart customers may not be aware of the Simplicity products in question, there were reports of an initial infant death in late 2007 that were caused by the now-recalled product. There was no recall at that time for reasons unknown (possibly due to the initial accident being ruled a freak accident). And then there's the history with Simplcity, the maker of the Bassinets in question. Apparently, there were more than a million similar units recalled from store shelves from May 2005 to September 2007 as multiple infants became trapped between the Bassinet's mattress and the railing. What was the CPSC doing during this time? Not issuing recalls until the one at the end of August (for reasons unknown). What was Wal-Mart doing during the same time period? Apparently still doing business with a company that was growing a very poor track record for products that were very dangerous to many infants.."

So, a faulty assembly was the cause, or just the blame? It's 2008 and products like these are still being assembled like in 1920 -- with old-fashioned nuts and bolts. There seems to be a problem with that. Where are the foolproof assembly designs? It's amazing that there are still products designed for use with infants that don't take into consideration the immense amount of variables that the products will face out in the real world while in use. When the manufacturer, Simplicity, was contacted recently, a pre-recorded message stated "Simplicity, Inc. is no longer in business and we no longer service Simplicity, Inc. products." That's refreshing to probably thousands of customers wanting information on how the products they may have inside their homes in use by their infants will fare in the future. How disgusting.

What Wal-Mart can do

It's not realistic to expect any manufacturer or retailer to produce and sell products that never fail, but one would think that extra careful attention would be paid to products made for children. We're not talking a DVD player or a picture frame, but a product that will be used around children who eat, climb, stretch, chew and get into anything and everything around them if not secured properly.

Wal-Mart needs to step up in situations like this and own the problem even if the manufacturer is long gone. After all, it sold the product to a customer. Quality control has steadily slid into the mud with many of the products made today, but there is no excuse for not making sure infant products don't have the absolute best quality control possible. And, much of that responsibility comes on the shoulders of the last entity to sell the product -- the retailer.