Treasury & Risk

To date, tests generally have not been carried out until it is often too late. Katherine Ann Cahill, global managing director for Marsh’s Product Risk Practice, suggests, for example, that tests be conducted at foreign trade zones, after goods arrive and before they are distributed in the U.S. Obviously, too, more supplier oversight is critical—but unwieldy when thousands of vendors are involved.

The most successful corporations will be those that have pre-established policies for everything from recall avoidance, to required contractual agreements to creation of product recall task forces. In the first case, says Cahill, a company must assess how it qualifies its suppliers, how it puts in place procedures to prevent a supplier from changing raw materials, and how it delineates precise tooling calibration protocols.