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Using Tech To Create Safe and Ethical Retail Supply Chains (forbes.com)
As manufacturing gets more distributed, it gets more anonymous in some ways: the parts for one computer might have been made in several countries, and even the assembly might have been split between more than one place; place of origin is complicated, and typically opaque for the purchaser of consumer goods. However, modern logistics and tracking mean that it doesn't have to be a mystery, and stages of a device's production can in theory be traced, which means that buyers and intermediaries can decide to buy essentially identical products and components based on factors like whether coffee is shade grown, or whether production line workers are treated in line with the buyer's own ethical demands. A slice from an article at Forbes about this kind of logistics-based practical ethics:
An anonymous reader writes: Certain companies are taking this a step further, by using technology to assist workers in their day-to-day activities – for example, BMW is creating bespoke thermoplastic polyurethane thumb protectors for their factory workers. Others are working on ways of incentivizing behavior on top of these systems. Levi's is piloting a program where they offer cheaper short-term credit to companies that meet their safety levels. While it's true that this would result in an initial upfront cost, the whole reason CSR programs were created to begin with was to obtain legitimacy and the appearance of good corporate citizenship. If consumers wanted fair supply chains to be a priority, they could let their shopping habits speak louder than their words. Technologically speaking, we are not far off from a point where price tags could also include a QR code that has a geotagged history of all the places the item has been.
So, I'm sure this thread like the one a bit below will be filled with people screaming for Forbes links to be excluded from Slashdot due to Forbes' assault on adblocking. My only problem with that is that I can see the article, and I'm using Ghostery and a custom /etc/hosts file so that I see no ads. I'm adblocking, and I'm reading Forbes, yet people on /. are complaining that it's not possible to do so.
What am I missing?
Out of sight out of mind is the main goal of our supply chains. You don't want to know how sausage is made. The closest I think we'll see is when robots replace the people on a few years
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Hopefully they can use this tech to reduce microaggressive behavior and to create inclusive, safe non-toxic environments for everyone as well.
This behavior will stop.. this is our internet.
Silence is a state of mime.
Do we really want that on sex toys?
At first glance, it appears to resemble the objective of the Kimberly Process which is to eliminate the trade in so-called conflict diamonds.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Political correctness offends me.
but yes i would like to know that on my wedding day that
1 the rings were not made using blood diamonds and slave labor
2 the clothes were not made in a sweatshop
3 the deco was crafted as eco friendly as possible
4 LOCAL First buying was used
Another example; more closely related to the point expressed in the article is jasmine rice. Like legitimate champagne or shade-grown fair trade coffee, jasmine rice is much sought after in the marketplace. Like champagne, "real" jasmine rice is supposed to be rice of a specific variety, grown in certain regions. There have been efforts to form grower and marketer groups that can create brands, authorize use of group logos and so on. And yet, adulterated or counterfeit jasmine rice is rampant in Asian marketplaces.
The point I'm making here is that, if a given product can demand a premium price compared to alternatives or competitors, disreputable people will find a way to get a taste of that action. Using technology can make the documentation process cheaper to implement and maintain, but ultimately I doubt it can provide as much assurance of product provenance as the public believes. The best that I think could be done would be a collection of RFID tags attached to every product. Each organization, at each stage of the manufacturing process, would add their own RFID tag, encrypted with their own key. A customer who doubted the provenance of the product could, in theory, decrypt the tag using the manufacturers public key and thus be assured the manufacturer is responsible for that tag.
This would be unwieldy as hell, an added expense, and wouldn't work anyway. You still have the problems of a) Is that the product the tag was originally attached to? b) Can we be sure the manufacturers key hasn't been compromised? c) Can we be sure that the manufacturer isn't lying? d) how far back along the chain are any users or value adders expected to go to ensure the nature of the product? e) how can we arrange things so the end user will actually bother to check these things? (and keep checking them every now and again) Some people read the label, but not everyone. And even among those who read the label, how many read that label every time they purchase it? Doing the due diligence is a huge pain in the ass, you're going to see non-compliance all over the place.
Slashdotters will easily recognize that this situation has a lot of resemblance to the problem of internet security. It all boils down to a chain of trust and every link in that chain is a potential flaw to be exploited.
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Great idea! Now all we need is an organization who can go and rate every supplier and manufacturer on the planet! And do regular checkups to make sure their ratings are still accurate. And they would be funded by the suppliers and manufacturers, but they would be totally independent because,well, just trust them. Or we can just have each supplier rate themselves! People who suggest these types of schemes don't have a handle on modern supply chains. It is a race to the bottom. The manufacturers and suppliers are bloodthirsty and running on thin margins. They don't give a damn about you, the kid who is making the shoes, or the environment. Most people are not "in tune" with corporate social responsibility at all. The hipsters see the posters in the Starbucks and feel good about themselves. Meanwhile Disney hires a bunch of H1B and lays off Americans, and people still flock to Disneyworld and Star Wars. People aren't "in tune" with anything except marketing.
But can we trust the manufacturing history?
How do we know Company A created such-and-such a component? Just because they said they did? And who's to say they didn't covertly subcontract it out? And how ethical are they anyways? And where's the proof that are as ethical as they say?
And even if Company A manufactured the component, how would we know they hired the labor themselves? They could supply the facilities, equipment, materials, etc. but hire Company B to provide the labor. So, the component was manufactured by Company A but by people working for Company B. Does the tracking system cover not just the corporations that manufactured each component but also who supplied the labor?
Anybody who has worked in a developing country knows how these things go.
Besides, very few people care enough about the ethics of anything to be willing to pay for it. That's how most manufacturing found its way to places where workers can be treated like sh*t. If people cared, the manufacturers wouldn't have succeeded in moving the manufacturing to begin with, because the first one to do it would've failed in the marketplace. But they did not fail and everybody else followed suit.
And what would the penalty be for a misleading manufacturing history?
As it stands now, a company can put an extra layer of packaging on a product and call it "Made in Canada". (I have personally seen this.)
And the US FTC's punishment for a major online vendor mislabeling goods as "Made in the U.S.A." on their webpage was... nothing.
I have also personally purchased a product mislabeled as "Made in U.S.A." on a different online vendor's webpage.
Don't even get me started on the Northern Marianas Islands debacle.
So, a supply chain history is useless if it isn't honest. And without deterring penalties, it'll pay to be dishonest.
And the fact is, most people don't care.
A few people do care and are willing to pay for it, and that game has been on for a while: How does the manufacturer get the consumer to pay for an ethnically-manufactured product without the manufacturer itself having to pay for an ethical manufacturing product?
In developing countries, it's not that hard to play that shell game if you're the one moving the shells. This supply chain history gimmick sounds good, but it's like asking a crook to stop playing one game and play another. A crook's a crook.
If a poker player cheats at poker and takes your money, are you dumb enough to think that by playing a different card game with that person, they won't try to cheat you?
If I understand the certification process, this is already being done with aviation and aerospace components and certain critical types of military equipment. If you purchase, for example, a grade 8 bolt and matching castle nut for an aviation application, it comes with a manufacturers document that guarantees it met spec when tested at their plant. The testing equipment the manufacturer uses also has its certificate(s) indicating who made it, when it was last calibrated, what the accuracy can be expected to be and so on. EVERY part on a commercial aircraft is supposed to have this chain of documented specs and testing.
All of that testing and record keeping adds to the manufacturing overhead, in turn greatly increasing cost. As a result; there is a thriving black market in stolen, superannuated or outright counterfeit aviation parts. There is enough margin there to make creating counterfeit documentation well worth the effort.
Yep, consider China fake parts 'used in US military equipment'.
I wish I had some points; parent is spot on. Probably the only things tech can bring to the table are: 1) driving down the cost of tracking and compliance so that it's not worth the trouble to re-label counterfeits; 2) allow for tracking of things that are not yet trackable; this has the potential to open up new markets, or improve the price / value differentiation in existing ones.
However, modern logistics and tracking mean that it doesn't have to be a mystery, and stage of a product's production can in theory be traced
Sure it can. IF someone is willing to pay the cost of doing the tracking. What? You thought material traceability was free? Someone has to keep track of all this stuff, store the records, make them available, audit them in some cases, etc. Even if you do all that there is basically no way to force your suppliers to comply unless you are a vital part of their business. A company like GM can force suppliers to track stuff if they think it is important enough. A company like mine (small manufacturer) will be studiously ignored.
The fact is however that most people aren't willing to pay for the overhead of a fully traceable supply chain. The benefit rarely outweighs the cost. Right now my company is getting routine requests for Conflict Minerals certifications which are mandated under US law under the Dodd-Frank Act. However it has little effect other than to burden business with pointless overhead for something most have no control over. The goal is to interfere with the financing of groups like the Congolese National Army. In practice it has had little meaningful effect on the finances of these groups but has created a lot of cost for businesses.
that would show you how old the child laborer was who made your stuff from China/Indonesia/Malaysia. I remember looking up my kid's soccer ball and finding out it was made by someone the same age. That site's long gone, and I can't imagine it died a happy death.
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The only way that 'ethical' music can happen is if you could detail precisely who gets what amount of the money you paid for the music (song/CD/tape).
Except nobody in their right mind will believe any numbers that any of the big labels would produce.
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I didn't say consumers were ignorant. I said they don't really care. You are talking about something totally different, a single supply chain in the US, which isn't as accurate as you think. I never argues against the FDA. I am talking about a GLOBAL supply chain obsessed with making money. The only benefit you would find in a CSR number is a warm happy feeling like the one you see when you look at the Fair Trade logo on your Starbucks cup. It is fake because it doesn't reflect reality. These type of programs are there so that hipsters like you can feel good. It is just good marketing.
I may be naive but I didn't know archive.is
Herve S.
among other I retain the Dutch phone company Fairphone, which details its supply of conflict-free metals, selected a (chinese) factory explicitly allowing syndicates etc.
For they second model this year they additionally evolved towards a modular design where one can replace specifically a broken part (be it the screen, the camera, of course the battery...) with either bare hand or a standard screwdriver. Alas in parallel they moved from a pre-rooted android OS to a non-rooted one. So... I remain with their earlier model.
I know no other company doing this, apart the (also Dutch) Max Havelaar coffee suppliers and some minor green food supplies.
Anyone?
Herve S.