Response to case study scenario 1

My decision would be to not ignore the problem. The first thing I would do would be to speak to my Supervisor about the situation and tell him that I feel it would be wrong to simply ignore the problem even if it is just 3 tests because there is still a possibility that these USB flash memory drives have the potential to be a fire hazard.

I remember a case in 2006 when Cadbury's had to take 1 million of their chocolate bars off the shelves because there was the possibility that they could be contaminated with salmonella. They failed to alert the Food Standards Agency that they had discovered salmonella at one of their plants. This greatly ruined Cadbury's reputation and raised a lot of ethical questions because there were reports to suggest that they had deliberately delayed releasing the information until production runs such as the Easter egg had ended. It was either a question of possibly losing money by not letting these chocolate bars go out or letting the chocolate bars go out and hoping that the traces of salmonella are too small to have any affect. Cadbury's ultimately decided to relase the choclate bars anyway knowing that there was a possibility that they could be contaminated and it was only later that they removed 1 million chocolate bars even though it was likely that the contaminated chocolate bars had already been bought and eaten.

I feel that this relates to my situation. Even though the Cadbury's case is obviously on a much bigger scale, it still raises alot of the same ethical questions. Do you risk losing money or clients? Or do you risk other people possibly getting injured or even losing their lives?

There is of course the possibilty that if nothing was done and something did go wrong with the batch of USB drives that were sent to the client then legal issues could arise. The client could sue the company which would not only ruin our reputation but it could also cause us to lose alot of money anyway. In my opinion it would not be worth the risk and action needs to be taken.

I think that the correct course of action to take as the Junior Engineer would be to talk to my Supervisor and advice him to talk to the client and explain to them that there is a possibility that something could go wong with the batch that was sent out to them. I would then suggest that the product be recalled and the client offered a refund or ask them to wait until the problem is resolved so that they are 100% safe for use before we send them a new batch. I think this would protect the company's reputation and would provide the customer the best service that we have to offer.