Yes, I do believe that Mattel acted in a socially responsible and ethical manner with regard to the safety of its toys. Back in the 1980’s when Mattel started to shift production to Asia, they were using outside contractors. This concerned Mattel, as they thought the contractors might start imitating and reproducing their products. In the 1990’s Mattel acquired or built production facilities in China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore. In 1997, Mattel developed a detailed code of conduct, they called it, The Global Manufacturing Principals. The principals covered both the Mattel factories, their contactors, and suppliers. The principals addressed primarily labor issues, such as wages, child labor, and health and safety. …show more content…
A lot of things can happen in between those tests, such as a contractor using lead paint and it not being caught. The professor had generous budget and access to all of the records, with this, I think that Mattel should have run the tests more frequently. After all, the lives that are stake are those of millions of children around the world. And do not forget about all of the stakeholders and shareholders when they have to make a recall. You might even lose the trust of your loyal customers, which will hurt the company in the long …show more content…
With that, I think that the government should impose polices that may even supersede what the company may already have in place. They should also develop uniform safety standards as well as voluntary recalls of any unsafe products. In China, the governments standards on lead paint is actually stricter than that of the United States, but has been lax in recent years. So China needs to step up on the inspection and enforcement of the use of lead paint on toys, like the United States. In the United States, the government has banned the use of lead paint on any toy product. The consumer’s advocates can aid in protecting the safety of children by challenging the government. They can stand up and make the government is doing their jobs, like fining the companies that violate the standards and polices. I believe that if the punishment came down on those companies that choose to violate the rules, then other companies will take notice and make sure that their own companies are staying within the regulations. The toy industry has already stated that the regulations on toy safety in the US is one of the strictest in the world, with other companies trying to emulate what we are doing. The toy industry also has set a new mandatory program that will require the US market to test to the US standards, making sure that the testing labs are qualified to perform the
Initially, the technological toys in question do not teach their owners the importance of responsibility. Consider the following question Frank Mullin poses in his article Love In the Time of Robots: “...what does a child
Executive summary of the event. In this business case, a shift from seasonal to monthly production of toys will change the seasonal cycle of Toys World's working capital needs and necessitate new bank credit arrangements. It has to analyze the company's performance, forecast fund needs and make a recommendation. The case introduces the pattern of current assets and cash flows in a seasonal company and provides elementary exercise in the construction of the pro forma financial statements and estimation of fund needs.
The Walt Disney Company is a highly diversified media and entertainment company that has been growing by leaps and bounds since its inception in the late 1920’s. In the past few decades, The Walt Disney Company has expanded into numerous markets and diversified its business greatly. The company states that their corporate strategy is targeted at creating high-quality family content, exploiting technological innovations to make entertainment experiences more memorable, and expanding internationally. Upon studying the happenings of the company throughout the years, it is easy to see that the company is executing this strategy well through numerous strategic moves in the industry.
Spokane Industries has contracted Franklin Electronics for an 18 month product development contract. Franklin Electronics is new to using project management methodologies and has not been exposed to earned value management methodologies. Even though Franklin and Spokane have worked together in the past, they have mainly used fixed-price contracts with little to no stipulations. For this project, Spokane Industries is requiring Franklin Electronics to use formalized project management methodologies, earned value cost schedules, and schedules for reports and meetings. Since Franklin Electronics had no experience with earned value management, the cost accounting group was trained in the methodology in order to bid for the project.
What core competencies do you think the company has and what is needed to exploit opportunity and counter threats.
In the contents of this case there are several management and safety issues and areas for improvement. One issue is Mattel, Inc.’s responsibility to its stakeholders; to its customers, to its stockholders, to its employees, and to its suppliers. The responsibility to Mattel’s customers is that of producing and selling safe products. Along with the recall on the lead coated toys there were also toys that contained small, but powerful magnets that if swallowed could attract each other and cause serious or fatal intestinal perforation or blockage. These defects were not discovered during the testing of the products. Before this incident occurred Mattel, Inc. was recognized by Forbes magazine as one of the 100 most trustworthy U.S. companies. Too this, Mattel did everything they could to assure that they were doing everything possible to handle and correct this problem. For Mattel’s stockholders, the company had to make sure that the image and reputation was saved and redeemed as soon as possible. With such a massive and extensive recall of potentially hazardous products, that was designed to be safe for children, the stock prices and e...
The Consumer and Industrial Products, Inc a company where their headquarters is based in the United States , also doing business internationally with facilities in Europe, Asia and South America. They are a manufacturing company what produced well known products to individuals and industries. This company is experiencing a great deal of trouble with their internal Payable Audit System (PAS) and how it would purchase goods; receive goods and pays for them. They are challenged with the redundancy and the lack of productivity to their system. They were finding ways to lower costs and eliminating steps in how these processes are getting accomplished. They decided that they needed to change their system and the way they did things at their business. There are some people, their roles and departments that will be closely involved with the process of this project. Some of these important roles will come from Ted Anderson director of disbursements, Peter Shaw the user project manager and Linda Watkins project director for the Payable Audit System (PAS). In addition, the Steering Group and the IS management department will have some important roles to the project too. Finally, there will be several major problems with the development of the project and how the one person would deal with these issues.
Disney Channels Worldwide are 24 hour kids and family entertainment channels that owned by Disney Channels Television Group, which is part of the Walt Disney Company, based on the United States but Disney Channels Worldwide broadcast in 163 countries, as well as broadcast in 34 languages (“Fact Sheet-Disney Channels Worldwide,” n.d.). Disney Channels Worldwide were able to reach diverse geographical locations through the partnership with to third party broadcasters in different parts of the world (“Fact Sheet-Disney Channels Worldwide,” n.d.). Also, Disney Channels Worldwide have several channels such as Disney Channel, Disney Junior, Disney XD, Disney Cinemagic, Hungama, Dlife, Disney Cinema and Radio Disney Network. Therefore,
Mattel inspected materials when they came in the factory door. Suppliers were monitored for problems such as lead-based paint, and some vendors had been terminated for violations. Mattel developed about 5,000 new toys each year. New toys were first produced in small batches before approval. When full-scale production began, the company would periodically take toys off the production line for inspection. (p.3)
... in the toy industry is to make toy safety the number one priority and to fulfill the customers’ needs.
If it would be profitable to split up Disney means that the NPV of the company is higher split up than the company in going concern in its present state. Doing this calculation is a complicated issue, which is outside the scope of this study question. But based on the above answers it does not make sense to split up Disney. Doing this would be very value destructing because it would not be possible to take advantage of the synergies, as well as the fact that one of the worlds best branded names would be thrown away. If Disney at some point of time gets into financial problems the solution therefore will not be to split up the core of Disney. There are though businesses that can be sold away. Examples of this are the Disney Magic Cruise and the Anaheim sports teams, which are not in the core of Disney and could be sold without destroying brand value and synergy. Especially selling the cruise would release quit a lot of money, so we expect that this will be the first thing to be sold. It would also be possible to outsource the hotels and restaurants in the theme parks. But splitting up the core of Disney would not make any sense.
Top managers should be reminded that they are ultimately responsible for the quality of a product and the company. Quality management is one of the keys. By defining quality in operational terms, understanding the costs and benefits of quality, recognizing the consequences of poor quality, and recognizing the need for ethical behavior (Stevenson, 2012), will lead to a more productive operation. If Toys, Inc. specifically doesn’t want to hire additional positions to inspect quality they could outsource to a company such as SATRA whom from its website states, “SATRA can assess the risk of injury from a toy, as well as carry out analysis for the presence of restricted metals such as lead, chromium and mercury(2015).” Quality is the ability of a product or service to consistently meet or exceed customer expectations (Stevenson, 2012). Quality when it comes to manufacturing of toys especially those that have moving parts also brings in safety concerns. “Market watch officials and technological experts have warned parents to pay more attention to the quality of toys they purchase to better protect their children (Hazell, C 2011).” Parents will associate a poorly made toy, especially one that already knows that it’s poorly made by having a trade-in program as potentially dangerous for their son or daughter. Continuing to have customer dissatisfaction will further question the quality of our product and in turn the safety of our
Kotler, P., & Keller, K. (2012). Marketing management (14th ed., Global ed.). Boston, [Mass.: Pearson.
The term “direct marketing” excludes the "middle man" from promotion, as a company's message is provided directly to a potential customer. (Investopedia, 2010) Direct marketing is an advertising campaign that aims to gain an action (such as an order, a visit to a store or Web site, or a request for further information) from a group of consumers in response specific communication from a marketer. The communication may take many forms such as mail, telemarketing, direct e-mail marketing, and point-of-sale (POS) interactions. (searchcrm.techtarget.com, 2014).