Do Plant Inspections Predict Future Quality? The Role of Investigator Experience
研究了工厂检查结果能否预测未来产品召回，发现检查结果可靠但随检查员对特定工厂经验增加而失效，并提出检查员轮换和排序政策来降低召回风险。
Plant inspections enable firms to manage their quality risk in global supply chains. However, surprisingly little research examines the relationship between such inspections and future product quality. In this paper, we study how well plant inspection outcomes predict the hazard of a future recall and analyze how investigator experience affects this predictive relationship. Using secondary data spanning a seven-year period in the medical device industry and a recurrent-event Cox proportional hazard model, our analysis shows that inspection outcomes reliably predict future product recalls. However, inspection outcomes become an unreliable predictor of recalls with an increase in site-specific investigator experience. Through post hoc analysis, we also show that the hazard of a recall at a plant increases with site-specific experience, independent of the inspection outcome. Compared to the first visit by an investigator, the recall hazard increases by 21% the second time the investigator visits a specific plant, and by 57% on the third visit. We propose investigator rotation and investigator sequencing as two policies to help mitigate this increased recall risk. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2017.0661 .