Core77

Lori Hobson at Mindtribe has a provocative blog entry on the perils of outsourcing our goods overseas, asking, essentially, what we could possibly have expected after deciding to seek out the "cheapest provider." But there's more to the post; here are a couple good bits:

Manufacturers: If your plan is to count on your industry's equivalent of Toys-R-Us to test for lead in your baby dolls and magic slates, it's time for a new plan. Best practices are changing. Soon you won't be able to hide behind an overworked Asian entrepreneur who saves you money but can't afford or appreciate your compelling need for product safety. You must become accountable for your supply chain.

and further along,

No amount of concerned VoIP seems to solve things; someone needs to get on a plane. So who can we trust to take those flights? We definitely need to ask this question before more children are exposed to lead, before more dogs and cats are "enriched" with melamine, and, for heaven's sake, before the screw somebody forgot to check on turns out to hold together the hard drive that hosts our digital photo library! We can trust the companies who innately recognize or have learned through trial and error (OUCH!) that they can't assume someone in a developing country has a clue about how we want our products put together. When did we forget that one of the reasons it costs less to go offshore is that there are basically no regulations on most of this stuff?