A Qualitative Examination Of Safety-Related Compliance Challenges For Global Manufacturing

Globally operating machine manufacturing companies need practices for recognising local safety requirements, as well as for designing the products for, and delivering them to, wider markets. This study aimed to determine (1) companies' product delivery strategies for managing product safety compliance and conformity in their supply chains, (2) the problems that arise in managing the product safety-related requirements and (3) how companies tackle these problems. The study comprised interviews with 25 representatives of 2 large internationally operating European companies manufacturing machines for use at work. The companies' strategies for decoupling the local safety requirements from their standard products covered make-to-stock, assemble-to-order, make-to-order and engineering-to-order. The problems were experienced mostly in systematic discovering and processing of the requirements, responsibility issues and unequal practices within global organisation. To tackle these problems, a company must have tools and practices to manage the information needs and understand the concepts of product delivery strategies.