Managing Product Quality Risk in Global Supply Chain

Recently, a series of product harm scandals, ranging from toxic toys to peanut butter, indicates that firms and consumers alike are vulnerable to quality risks in a global supply chain. The matter is exacerbated with a low 'visibility' of quality risks hidden in the multi-tiers global supply networks. The threat of quality risks could be from raw materials, manufacturing processes, or logistics operations in any tiers of the supply network. This research argues that better visibility of risk in supply tiers could minimize the quality threat. A product quality risk and visibility assessment framework, employing the incremental calculus techniques, is proposed. Case study results indicates that the proposed approach has the following benefits: a) enables firms to have a better 'visibility' of quality risks in multi-tiers supply network; b) allows firms to establish risk indexes for product components