Mattel Runs Aground

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It is interesting to watch the storm brewing around Mattel over it’s contract manufacturing in China. Initially, Mattel came out on the victim side, claiming that 21 million toys manufactured in China had to be recalled due to leaded paint, magnet, and choke-hazard issues. Now, it appears, Chinese quality control has been vindicated to a large extent and it’s Mattel that has egg on its face.

Mattel contracted with Chinese manufacturers to produce products that had small removable parts that posed a choke hazard to children. Whether the toys were of US design or of foreign vendor design makes no difference. Mattel should have been on top of the design questions before the injection molds were made. Period.  The Chinese vendors made product to spec. 

Mattel has issued apologies to various parties in China over the unwarranted accusations that Chinese manufacturing lapses were responsible for the massive toy recall.  This is a major hiccup for Mattel, much akin to a container ship hitting a sand bar. When a ship runs aground, it is the captains fault. When Mattel ushers its investors through a major business fiasco like this, the CEO, President, and a few VP’s must be made to take the hit personally. The Mattel toy disaster is just bad product development, which is a management exercise.  Putting a dangerous toy on the market is a liability they should be very familiar with.   

In the Mattel case, a major organizational shakeup is needed to knock loose the ossified Mattel managers who should have caught the design flaws. I don’t know about the leaded paint issue, but certainly choke hazards and dangerous magnets that can be swallowed by children are not part of some new problem.  Corners were cut and and now the guilty parties from management have to line up at the Guillotine. It’s a bummer, but it has to happen to save the Mattel brand.

Note added 9/22/07:  Mattel has apologized in a public apology to Chinese product safety chief Li Changjiang, among others.  It is unclear, however, as to whether the apology applies to the leaded paint issue. It’s too late for at least one character. The manager of the factory that supplied the Sesame Street figures containing lead paint was found hanged at the factory, an apparent suicide.

It must be very frustrating for Chinese officials to find themselves subject to negative publicity generated by foreign companies and amplified by their governments.  This Marxist-Capitalist chimera founded by Mao finds itself being out of control of negative information echoing around the world and within China itself.  Chinese leadership is much more accustomed to providing processed information in order to guide the populace to the more correct thinking.  It is like a comb carefully lining up all of the individual hairs to lie in the same direction. If the Mattel fiasco had been entirely internal to China, I wonder if there would be any imprisonments or executions? 

On Getting Screwed. Gausslings 3rd Epistle to the Bohemians.

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At some point in you career, you’re going to get screwed. Either by an organization, a person, a cabal, or some dark force. It’s going to happen so you should give some thought as to how you’ll behave.  But what do I mean by “getting screwed”?

Getting screwed means that you’re career has taken some kind of a hit as the result of an aggressive or destructive act. Your reputation has been besmurched or soiled in a way to cause harm, or some damage has come to your credibility as the result of the posturing of another player.  Screwings as a result of your own stupid behaviour are self-imposed and are not addressed here.

To use the naval metaphor, a hit can happen above or below the waterline.  A hit above the waterline may be survivable, but one below the waterline means that you’re gonna sink. No matter what, you’re going to take some hits. The goal is to minimize the hits below the waterline.

When I was teaching, my rule of thumb was that about 10 % of the class will hate your guts no matter what, about 10 % will love you no matter what, and the 80 % in the middle were undecided. Turns out this may be generally true in polite society.  Call it the 10:80:10 Rule.  (Minimally, it is a comfortable illusion that I cling to… )

Nobody is universally loved; not Lassie, the Virgin Mary, or even Col. Sanders. In fact, the goal really shouldn’t be to find universal love and adoration. The goal should be to earn as much respect as you can.  It is possible for people to dislike you, but simultaneously respect you. That is probably as much as you can expect. Pay special attention to people who dislike you. You may learn something important about youself.

Whoever said “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer” was a true seer and this should always be considered, distasteful as it may be.

Office politics are ubiquitous and you should learn to master it.  Put two people in a room and you have politics. There will always be competing interests and ego. Always. Pretending to be apolitical is just another form of politics- the politics of victimhood.  Your political stance should always include- BE HONEST, GENEROUS, and FAIR. This is a type of politics- don’t be shy in using it.

Always be honest. It is too hard to remember all of the intertwining lies and subterfuge.  Always seek the best for the company and your colleagues. Be fair and generous with credit for contributions to a project.  The politics of earnestness is hard to beat. Remember, you cannot fall off the floor.

If your career is being sabotaged, address it in a straighforward and open manner. To respond in kind is to abandon all hope of fair treatment later. It is always better to be guilty of being honest.

If you find yourself working with insufferable SOB’s who participate in fatal office politics, still, try to be fair and upbeat. It is better to have lost a position and be given the chance to move on than to sink to petty and crude behaviour.

Chemical Fear Factor

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The chemical business environment is changing in some ways that, I fear, add even more disadvantage to small chemical manufacturers. The regulatory sphere is closing in on our chemical manufacturing industry like shrink wrap around a gutted salmon.  Whereas it was once straightforward to bring a new chemical product to the B2B market, now we have TSCA and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) placing complex obstacles in the road. 

TSCA compliance for non-listed compounds requires that process details be disclosed for screening and hazard modeling by EPA workers.  Unless the EPA finds some compelling environmental or worker exposure issue that requires further consideration, a new compound is allowed.  

Operating unsafely is a poor business model. Civil litigation and insurance pressures are usually enough to motivate a plant operator to conduct safe practices. Regardless, if you’re in the business of breaking trail in developing new chemical entities, waiting for allowance by EPA necessitates starting the development timeline up to a full quarter in advance.  TSCA filing also starts an audit trail that, for the unwary, can lead to a filing cabinet full of discoverable documents that can return to haunt you.  TSCA is powerful code and it is one of the larger hammers that the government wields.

Before the chemical regulatory epoch began in earnest, chemical processing merely delt with the forces of the market and of nature.  Corrosives, flammable liquids, runaway reactions, foreign competition, etc. That was dangerous enough and required the full attention of many experts. 

Today, in addition to chemical hazards we have administrative hazards that require specially trained staff and, naturally, lawyers. Law office charges to document compliance may cost as much per hour as a whole shift of operators for a medium scale process line. 

The federal government is beginning to impose itself more strongly in the operations of chemical plants. Part of this is in response to international terrorism.  Like children sitting in a darkened room telling ghost stories, federal regulators have stirred themselves into a twitter. Apparently, they have developed fault trees that line out the universe of consequences from attack scenario’s on our chemical industrial infrastructure.  Code has been written and passed by the congress, signed by the president, and embraced by the suffocating bosom of the Department of Homeland Security. Woe is he who runs afoul of these people. Their para-military authority and zeal is what makes me uncomfortable.

If only we could be so analytical and systematic about invading and destabilizing prickly iron-age cultures on the other side of the world.

Of course, one cannot entirely fault the government for trying to apply the Precautionary Principle.  It seems so sensible.  But the eternal question is, what are the thresholds for action?  Where safe meets sorry is also where the rubber meets the road.  How much more industry are we going to chase to Asia?

On the non-security side, Europe has adopted REACH. I’m trying not to be a Chicken Little, but before the US adopts this approach to environmental regulation, we should study the suite of unintended consequences that will surely arise from this regulatory framework.  The EU is breaking trail for us and we should pay attention.

Etymology of the Elements

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Th’ Gaussling was interested to learn of an obscure author detailing an alternative and systematic nomenclature of the elements of the periodic table. The book is “Chemistianity“, by J. Carrington Sellars, F.C.S., printed in 1873.  The link provided is part of a larger chemical etymology website authored by historian Peter van der Krogt called Elementymology & Elements Multidict. 

Chemistry is such a large field and so rich in detail and history that we may forget how much struggle occured to give us even the most basic of concepts.  The science of chemistry largely rests on the behaviour of valence electrons confined to oddly shaped patches of 3-space called orbitals.  The nuclei set up the charge fields, but the chemistry is in how the electrons behave. It is the electrons that we manipulate in the laboratory to afford the wonderful spectum of chemical substances.

What is astonishing is the number of technologies and the extent of groundwork that had to overlap in order for our now cherished quantum/electronic theory of chemistry to arise. A long line of chemists like Berzelius had to produce and characterize new elements so Mendeleev could chart the patterns and predict new elements. Other workers would fill in the gaps. 

New Chemistry Links

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Some new blogs have appeared on my radar. One is the Spinneret.  It is not so much a blog, perhaps, as a news magazine and resource nexus. You can leave comments attached to the post just like a blog, but the writer is reporting chemistry related news.

ChemSpy.com collects news feeds from popular chemistry sources. The subtitle says “The internet navigator for the chemical industry”. Check out the library of tutorials.

Over at Depth First, the writer offers a great tip on finding structures from CASRN’s for free.  Cruise around the site. There is a lot of interesting work happening in the Chemical Informatics field.

Reactive Reports labels itself as a Chemistry WebMagazine, and that certainly seems to be what it is.  It takes a fairly large amount of effort to produce such a thing. Looks like they have enough visitors to attract a sponsor. 

Ranium. The only thing missing is U.

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On this magical day 50 years ago, Th’ Gaussling was born into the world.  Yes, I am a 9/11 baby and today is L-Day. Remember your Roman numerals?  Once a perfectly respectable though bland day of the year, 9/11 has become the new Pearl Harbor Day. Everybody remembers where the hell they were 9/11/01.  I turned 44 that day. 

To celebrate this day, we decided to do an unusual thing. We went uranium prospecting.  I borrowed a Geiger Counter and we headed up to the mountains near Idaho Springs.  A few weeks back in a chance encounter with a retired hard rock miner, I learned of an old mine that was allegedly dug with the hope of finding uranium. Looking like a thousand other abandoned mines, this mine has been silent for many years. [Sidebar: This fellow didn’t look like Gabby Hayes, though his chums certainly do. Hardrock mining is a tough business.]

Our miner seemed credible. When asked, he did know about pitchblende and other uranium-bearing ore deposits in the area. He said that there used to be a “big operation over that ridge over there” (pointing east). The miner was very cautious about giving too many details. Most people asked him about gold, so his curiosity about me was piqued when I starting drilling into the particulars of uranium.  Mining is a very secretive business. Gold fever is real but other metals will cause this enchantment as well.

So, we pulled along side the narrow dirt road this morning with sample bags and a GM counter.  This model is a survey meter with a thin metal (aluminum) window protecting the GM tube.  So, we could not pick up alpha’s at all and probably very few beta’s- just gamma’s for the most part.  Given the penetrating ability of gamma radiation, with it’s low ionization aptitude, a large fraction of the gamma’s sail through the tube undetected.

At our home along the Front Range of Colorado, the meter will pick up maybe 8-15 counts of background radiation per minute on average. Cosmic rays, solar radiation, and radiation sources from the rock and soil make up the background rate.

Scrambling over the mine tailings, we found sporadic upticks in the count as the detector approached the pile. Overall the detectable radiation was qualitatively 3-5 times the background rate found at home. The counter (which is calibrated) rarely indicated higher than 0.1 MR/hr.  While the mine tunnel was open, I declined to enter, prefering to work on the tailings pile.

While there is clearly radioactive material in the mine tailings, the sum total of the radioactive species seemed quite low.  Of course, I do not know what the situation is with the alpha emitters.  No individual rock was even remotely hot.  The GM tube near the ground was picking up the sum of all the emissions in the area.

It would seem that the miner was partially right about the mine. They might have been digging for uranium, but it would appear that they did not find much of it, given the lack of development and the apparent lack of significant radioactivity in the tailings. 

Tempest Down Under. Bush-Roh Row.

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It is funny to read about the minor presidential dust-up between the Bush and Roh. The fracas is now being blamed on poor translation. That could be true.  But how do you focus on a fuzzy picture? The translators art is to precisely translate ambiguous language. There are too many degrees of freedom- it’s like pushing a rope. The presidents walk away as the translator falls on his sword.  I think I’d rather work with hazardous chemicals.

Whereupon Gaussling launches a business unit.

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This was a big day for Th’ Gaussling. The new business unit I have been developing sent it’s first in-house chemical product out the door. Okay, it was a modest 25 grams of specialty product. But for the first time the cash has started to flow the other direction. We are reworking our catalog operation for faster and better service while taking advantage of bulk production by another division for better economy. Watch out, Aldrich!  \;-)

Doing chemical synthesis is easy compared to inventing a custom business architecture; especially one that has to be compatible with other systems, yet bringing improvements forward. It is like doing a reaction that requires 12 molecules (dodeca-molecular?) to collide simultaneously- We call it “getting buy-in”.  To start a new business unit in a company, you have to get buy-in from accounting, IT, analytical services, quality control, upper management, shipping and receiving, production, R&D, etc.  Lots of skeptical folks need to be assured that you’re not going to complicate their lives, threaten their careers, or create accounting hazards.

Business architecture amounts to the work flow mechanisms necessary for order fulfillment.  If an order comes in, how do you go about filling it and getting product to the customer while ensuring profitability, regulatory compliance, safety, and a comprehensive web of accounting relationships? Every product has to be a discrete entity that has branched audit trails- costing, analytical, raw material lot #’s, and business intelligence.  Every product must have an up to date MSDS, specifications, certificate of analysis, and a manufacturing procedure that does not require a PhD to make it. Well, that last one is a more nebulous goal.

I now have a more visceral appreciation for all the work that has gone on behind the scenes at the major chemical catalog companies. A lot of work goes into every single product entry. Every product has a trail of raw material specs, finished goods specs, and specific analytical test methods. Record keeping must be up to the task. It takes a lot of different skill sets besides savvy with chemicals to operate a chemical company.