ABSTRACT
Quality assurance fraud as perpetrated by a supplier is probably obvious: A supplier either cannot or is not willing to manufacture to the required specifications and provides bribes or kickbacks to a key employee or two at the customer organization to look the other way. The supplier cannot afford the new mold or the more expensive first-quality materials necessary due to its own economic problems, which may be the result of bad business decisions that could have been exasperated by personal vices or family pressures. The supplier may be outsourcing all or part of its manufacturing processes and may be lax in its own quality enforcement. Quality assurance programs that are viewed as operational roadblocks or are unresourced to the point of being bottleneck processes will cause stress to other functional areas such as manufacturing and distribution. Hazardous waste from manufacturing operations is common in industries such as metal stamping, power generation, textiles, and food and beverage production.
