Medical device firm managers frequently rely on their physician customers to screen detectable defects rather than issuing a recall, according to a study in The Journal of Operations Management.
According to the study's lead author George Ball, PhD, "When the defect is detectable to the physician, managers are less likely to recall. This is because of a perception of increased patient safety when defects are detectable."
Researchers studied the behavior of 167 managers from a Fortune 500 medical device firm. Another study detailed in the article looked at 614 Amazon Mechanical Turk subjects' behaviors followed by another study of 372 Amazon Mechanical Turk subjects.
Researchers found managers frequently waited to issue a recall until they understood the root cause of the product's defect. They found perceived patient customer harm and perceived cost of the recall both influence the relationship between defect detectability and recall likelihood, but harm is more influential than cost.
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