Prevention Planning for a Product Recall - recall management software services and solutions

Imagine the scene: You wake up, turn on your laptop, and read your emails. There’s a message from someone at your legal department:

“We’ve received a product recall notice from the FDA. One of our products contains a dangerous ingredient. We need to act now.”

The FDA (and other federal agencies) issue warnings like this all the time. They typically post information about recalls, corrections, and removals on their website when a product violates the law. At this point, it could be too late. You might not know what to do because you lack a proper product recall prevention strategy.

That’s why it’s so important to plan. Preparing product recall responses now will improve product safety and liability and protect your business reputation.

How a Product Recall Notice Affects Your Organization

The cost of a product recall is, on average, $10 million, but it can reach over $100 million in some cases. That’s because many organizations are completely unprepared for a product recall situation and don’t know what to do.

Responding to a recall notice is much more than removing affected products from supply chains. You need to:

Respond to the FDA (or other government agency that issued the notice) on time or face expensive penalties for non-compliance.
Remove affected products from retail stores and other physical locations, which requires a lot of logistics.
Issue press releases and statements that reassure the public about your safety protocols. Otherwise, the product recall could damage your business reputation.
Change your supply chain workflows because of the recall.
You might even need to compensate affected customers.

You won’t have long to execute these tasks. Plus, the longer you take to respond to a recall notice, the more damage you might do.

Why You Need a Product Recall Prevention Strategy

You might think a product recall notice won’t affect your organization, but what if it does? Creating a prevention plan now enables your team to act quickly and more effectively in a recall situation so you can avoid product safety and liability penalties. Here are some benefits of creating a prevention plan:

Identify recovery goals for your business in the event of a recall.
Identify recovery tools and technologies that improve recall responses.
Speed up recall response times.
Define department roles during a recall.

Consumer Product Recalls and Compliance Issues in 2021

What to Include in Your Prevention Plan

Your prevention plan should describe the steps to take after receiving a product recall notice. Include instructions for your entire organization or create specific prevention plans for different departments (legal, compliance, manufacturing, production, PR, etc.). Here are some steps to include:

How to reach suppliers, partners, retailers, logistics providers, and other people in your supply chain.
How to communicate information about affected products to the media.
How to communicate information about affected products to consumers.
How to respond to government notices quickly and avoid penalties for non-compliance.
How to improve product safety and liability in the future.
How to improve product recall response department roles.

3 Medical Device Regulatory Compliance Issues in 2021

Incorporate Recall Management Software Into Your Prevention Strategy

One of the most critical components of your recall prevention plan is detailing the technologies that will monitor and manage recalls. If you still rely on manual methods or use several programs to track product recall information, consider recall management software. This tool lets you control recalls from one system and automate many of the tasks associated with recall management.

Trievr is a product recall management system that comes with the following features:

Manage product recalls on-demand with none of the manual tasks. There’s no more paperwork.
Enhance product safety and liability.
Centralize product recall management with one system. There’s no need for several programs or bloated software.
Lifetime document storage. Keep recall-related documents in the cloud for compliance and legal reasons.
Product recall templates.
Auto-alerts that notify team members about recall-related tasks.
Real-time dashboards that track recalls.
Enhanced security: Trievr never shares data and takes part in the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield frameworks.

Schedule a live free demo of Trievr here!

Final Word

Nobody wants to receive a product recall notice, but you should prepare for the worst-case scenario. Detailing the steps you will take during a product recall emergency minimizes the impact of the recall, reduces the likelihood of penalties, and protects your business reputation. Incorporating recall management software like Trievr into your prevention plan makes it easier to track and manage recalls from one system, making this program a valuable addition to your organization.

Are you looking for software that facilitates product recall management in your organization? Trievr has a suite of features for tracking and managing recalls across various industries, such as recall templates, document storage, and real-time reporting. Sign up for your free trial.