Response to case study scenario 1

Some of today’s business goals from a manager’s point of view is to produce high quality products in a least cost-effective way, scalability; expand into a wider market and to meet the demands of consumers. In some time of our lifetime we all make minor mistakes, if we did not, we would never learn new strategies or improvements which can be made to a product. My question is "How do we stop testers reviewing reports late?". From past experience of working in an Optical Retailers group, a report is reviewed at an earlier stage ideally before the dispatch of an order, in order to meet a testers job specification and reach the organisations target and goal of producing a quality product. Testability is a process, which is undertaken at several manufacturing stages and is an undergoing process, not a last minute job process. A creative solution which should be used, would be to have the testing and arrangement of devices automated. After the manufacturing and testing stage, having two large containers with the colours of "red" and "green"; the "red" indicating failed and "green" indicating passed test devices. This would be implemented with a conveyor and gate to control the device into their individual containers. The devices in the "green" container would be authorised for delivery, however devices in the "red" container would be reviewed by myself after reviewing the report. This will prevent defect devices from being despatched and allow time for myself to investigate the problems.

U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, as an example, has the duty to protect the public from unreasonable risks of serious injury or death. A safety recall issued “Consumers should stop using the product immediately unless otherwise instructed”, should be used as an action in this case. It may seem that the 3 USB memory drives, which failed, is a small number compared to 200, but it is potentially a fire hazard to the consumer, which could result in serious injury or death. The IEEE code of eithics suggests “to accept responsibility in making decisions consistent with the safety, health and welfare of the public, and to disclose promptly factors that might endanger the public or the environment”, it is my duty to inform the customer to STOP using or selling the products to prevent on breaking the code of conduct and resulting in severe consequences such as causing serious injury or death to a consumer.

Option 1: -

To protect the consumer and organisation, I would make the manager aware of this and the possible outcome as mentioned in option2 below. To resolve this issue, I would alert the consumer that after careful verification, a safety check fail was discovered which leads to a potential risk of a fire hazard on 3 of their 200 devices. An apology would be given and for their safety, I would consider them on returning the devices for further investigations and a new order would be made immediately and offer the consumer a percentage discount for the items. Likely outcome would be that the customer would understand and accept this and the company would continue in its promotion of one of the successful retailers in the world. An analogy comparison would be similar to the growing of an organisation just like the ageing of a human being; baby – child – teenager – adult, adult as being mature and developed in comparison to the company being expanded into a wider market.

Option 2: -

If the problem is ignored and the employee takes the manager’s advise, demanding defect products will reduce the reliability of the product and the organisation’s scalability and financial status will decrease. The consumer, under the human rights legislation, by law is allowed to sue the company for providing defect and risk hazard products. As this defect may affect more consumers, the higher chance the organisations reputation will decrease, less demand of products and eventually the business may become redundant. An analogy comparison would be the opposite of option 1. Taking this option would be similar to the shrinking of an organisation just like a human being ageing backwards after he/she has partly grown; adult – teenager – child –baby returns back to the learning stages.

As a junior engineer working in a safety testing group at a company will not ignore the problem of 3 failures of power consumption reported from the testing of 200 USB flash memory drives. I have come to a decision of choosing option ‘1’ as it is my duty to be honest and have an ownership of the company. I would also implement a automated testing and arrangement facility to filter out "passed" and "failed" devices resulting in good management and prevent unnecessary consequences.