The Recall Problem
Two recall notices landed within months of each other. One for my Ram truck. One for my Harley-Davidson. Different manufacturers, different vehicles, same demand: bring it in immediately, the part is defective, this is a safety issue.
So I did what every responsible owner does. Rearranged my schedule twice. Drove to two different service departments. Waited.
Neither vehicle had the defective part.
Not "the part was fine." Not "we found nothing wrong." The actual component named in the recall was never installed in either of my vehicles in the first place.
No one apologized for my time. No one offered anything for the hours I lost rearranging a workday around a problem that didn't exist on my truck or my bike. The notice went out to every VIN in a broad range, because that's the most precise targeting the manufacturer could manage, and I was collateral damage in a system that can't tell the difference between "this exact unit has the bad part" and "this unit was built somewhere near the ones that might."
That's not bad luck. That's a data problem wearing a customer service costume.
The fix everyone reaches for is the band aid: train the service writers to apologize better, hand out a goodwill credit, smooth over the friction after it already cost someone an afternoon. None of that touches the actual defect, which is that the manufacturer never had certainty at the individual part level about which units actually received which component lot. Apologizing well for an imprecise recall is still an imprecise recall.
I wrote Logistics on the Ledger because that gap, the space between "we think it might be in this range" and "we know exactly which units have it," is exactly what blockchain based traceability is built to close. Not as a buzzword. As infrastructure that makes the next recall notice land on the people who actually need it, and nobody else.
https://amzn.to/4fZSFhH
I have spent the time since that book came out proving this is buildable, not just writable. More on that soon.
If you have ever been recalled into a dealership for a part your vehicle never had, I would like to hear about it in the comments. I suspect I am not the only one.
#SupplyChain #Blockchain #ProductRecalls #RiskManagement #Traceability