What do you do when your company makes a major blunder?
NYTimes.com recently reported a voluntary recall of about 11 million bottles of 500-milligram acetaminophen caplets made by the Perrigo Company. The pills, which the Food and Drug Administration reported as containing traces of metal fragments, had been sold at major retailers, such as CVS and Wal-Mart, for as long as three-years. The company said the metal pieces were the result of premature equipment wear-out and an investigation discovered metal in roughly 200 pills of the 70 million it tested.
Big oops, Perrigo. What I want to know is how did it take the company up to three years to discover the contaminated pills? What could have been done differently and what was overlooked? And what are the consumer ramifications?
When any business makes a major, potentially preventable, mistake, the effects can be incredibly damaging to the bottom line –- new clients refuse to contemplate collaboration; existing clients question their current partnership; and previous clients go back and reevaluate the services they had rendered. My question is, how does a company recover from a major blunder? Can it be exonerated for such an enormous mistake and its reputation restored –- or will the error indefinitely remain as an unforgiving scar?
* Editor's note: Read up on the latest management best practices on ManageSmarter.com to help prevent your own business "oops."
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