Quality Control

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Quality Control
The case study of the supply of expired meat to McDonald’s restaurant in China presents a pertinent issue that many global corporations face. The Shanghai Husi Company that supplied meat to McDonald’s was accused of providing meat that had exceeded its shelf life. The main motive for this was most likely to keep up the profits of the supplier, which would have reduced if they threw out the expired meat. Shanghai Husi is a subsidiary of an American company; hence, much of the blame is to be taken by the parent company. The parent company is tasked with ensuring that subsidiaries comply with necessary policies and regulations, and quality control is one of such systems. The challenge, in this case, is that China and the United States are quite a distance apart, and it is impossible to monitor the daily activities of the subsidiary. However, there are several steps concerning quality control that the company can take.
The first is to ensure that the subsidiary educates its employees extensively about the policies and standards prescribed by the parent company. The parent company can send some representatives to ensure that training is in line with requirements. The second step that can help is maintaining quality control is carrying out random sample testing to check for freshness and quality in the products supplied by the subsidiary. Those employed in the supply chain must ensure that daily checks are carried out to make sure that all products that are to be sold are within the recommended shelf-life. Third, the company must ensure that employees have realistic targets set for them so that they are not tempted to breach ethics to realize a fixed profit margin. The most important thing that both parent and subsidiary should emphasize is quality and safety over profit because taking expired food can have serious health consequences on consumers.