Why Product Risk Assessment Is Important?

In order to create responsible, safe and compliant products there is a need for actionable, clear and verifiable processes, which also include plans risk assessment for the product. This is an area which is as important to meet the larger end objective, as the product safety, supply chain management and social compliance.

What is the reason that product risk assessment is so important, especially for companies who are engaged in promotional products?

All the promotional products are normally used by businesses for promoting their company, brand, organization or event.  No company will like to get their company’s name tarnished by using an unsafe item. 

Any consumer who hear of recall will not pay attention to supplier’s name of the promotional items but only remember that particular brand’s name had a link to certain unsafe product.

All responsible suppliers who provide promotional products understand it and take various steps to evaluate all their items to make sure that their ultimate customer receives an item which is safe for the use.

In present day’s culture of increasingly safety-mindedness, no company can afford to ignore or overlook compliance-related processes e.g. product risk assessments.

While there may be few fly-by-night outfits who are selling promotional products however, the good ones will understand about the value of customer’s reputation, and by supplying them with certain unsafe products, may ultimately ruin their business relationship.

Now the quest is how can companies review their products to make sure that they have designed and manufactured their product to meet all the critical requirements?

1. Companies must develop processes and provide their staff with necessary tools to evaluate the risk properly.
2. Such process must include all these during product design phase.
3. Also, need to create systems for checking that their products are made to specification.
4. Must manage their supply chain properly.
5. Also have plan for product recall management.

What steps few companies take to assess or to reduce product risk?

They have the processes as well as right tools to evaluate various product risks. The product development cell is also knowing the guidelines to cover different product categories to follow to create new products which help them to avoid critical issues. 

It is much simpler to tweak the product during design phase rather than changing something after the process. Before launching a product, it must go through a formal, final compliance review.

Also, quality assurance and testing process is very critical to make sure that product will meet the requirements.

Compliance is usually a nexus between the product development team and the sourcing of different materials.  There must be clear communication lines between them so that it becomes easy to discuss any kind of issue related to compliance or question that can appear during any stage of life cycle of the item.

How does accreditation play some role to help in minimizing the product risk?

Any accreditation agency is an independent, 3rd-party validation which can evaluate the products for any kind of potential risks.  If the responsible suppliers have robust processes available, then it is also important that someone independent can verify it.