Business

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SOUTH ISLAND DAIRY: MILKSHAKE ANYONE?

As a college business student who just started working for South Island Dairy Plant over the summer. BACKGROUND South Island Dairy (SI Dairy) has a plant that manufactures milkshake and ice cream mix for a number of customers on Vancouver Island. It sells the ice cream mix in 25 and 50 litre containers to other companies, who then add flavoring ingredients (e.g., strawberries or blueberries), package, freeze, and then sell the ice cream under their own brand names. SI Dairy also sells the milkshake mix in 25 litre plastic-lined cardboard cartons, which are delivered to many of the restaurants, cafés, etc. You begin working the night shift from 11:00 pm to 7:00 am, six nights per week – Sunday through Friday. With the regular wages paid at SI Dairy, plus time and one-half for eight hours of guaranteed overtime each week, you hope to save quite a bit of money before returning to school in early September. When you started working your first shift, you discovered that there was no manager assigned to the night shift. The entire plant was operated by a six-person crew of operators. One member of the crew, Guerin Guernsey, received each night’s production orders from the day shift superintendent before he left for the day. Although Guerin’s position was no different from that of his five coworkers, the others looked to him as their leader. Guerin passed the production orders to the mixer (who was the first stage of the production process) and kept the production records for the shift. The production process was quite simple. Mixes moved between various pieces of equipment (including mixing vats, pasteurizers, coolers, homogenizers, and filling machines) through stainless steel pipes suspended from the ceiling. All of the pipes had to be disassembled, thoroughly cleaned, and reinstalled by the end of the night shift. This process took approximately one hour, so all the mix had to be run by 6:00 am in order to complete the cleanup by the 7:00 am quitting time. Guerin and one other worker, Jersey (the mixer), cleaned the giant mixing vats while the other four (including you) on the shift, cleaned and reinstalled the pipes and filters. You soon learned that Guerin felt a sense of responsibility for completing all of the assigned work before the end of the shift. Management has two expectations of the night shift. First, the shift was expected to complete the production orders each night. Second, management expected the equipment, including the pipes, to be spotlessly cleaned at the end of the night shift. Guerin told you that inspectors from the health department would occasionally drop by unannounced at the end of the shift to inspect the vats and pipes after they were disassembled and cleaned. Guerin also told you that management would be very upset if the inspectors registered any complaints about cleanliness. THE CURRENT SITUATION Things were going quite well for you on the job – until a few minutes ago. The milkshake mix started discharging out of one of the joints in the overhead pipe network. You shut down the pumps while you disassembled the joint to look for the problem. After removing the filter screen from the pipe at the leaking joint, you saw that it was completely packed with solid matter. Closer inspection revealed that this solid matter were maggots. You hurriedly took the filter to Guerin to show him the blockage. Guerin did not seem too concerned and told you to clean the filter and reassemble the joint. When you asked how this could have happened, Guerin said maggots occasionally got into the bags of

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certain ingredients that were stored in a warehouse at the back of the lot. “Don’t worry,” said Guerin, “the filters will catch any solid matter.” Feeling somewhat reassured, you cleaned the filter and reassembled the pipe. But still, the image of maggots floating in a milkshake was hard to shake. Shortly after the pumps were re-started, the mix began to flow out of another joint. Once again, a filter plugged with maggots was found to be the cause. For a second time, you cleaned the filter and reassembled the connection. This time Guerin seemed a bit more concerned as he noted that they barely had enough time to run the last 5000 litres remaining in the vats before they needed to clean up in preparation for the end of the shift. Moments after the equipment was again re-started, another joint started to discharge. When maggots were found to be clogging this filter too, Guerin told you to remove all five filters from the line so the last 5000 litres could be run without any filters. Guerin laughed when he saw your shocked look and said, “Don’t forget that all of this stuff goes through the homogenizer so any solid matter will be completely pulverized. And when it’s heated in the pasteurization process, any bacteria will be killed. No one will ever know about this, the company can save a lot of mix – that’s money – and, most importantly, we can run this through and go home on time.” The product was thoroughly mixed in the mixing vats at the beginning of the process, which meant that contaminants would be distributed uniformly throughout the 5000 litres. These 5000 litres are very expensive and you did not think management would want it dumped down the drain. You were also positive that removing all of the filters, a 10-minute job, would ensure that this last production order was completed and pipes cleaned so that the shift would be out on time. As you walked to the first filter joint, you are uncertain what to do next. You can do what Guerin told you to do and go home on time after your shift. However, you can’t shake the gross image of all those innocent kids drinking milkshakes contaminated with crushed maggots. If you choose to go against what Guerin told you to do, what impact will this have on the night shift and more importantly, on the dairy plant?

▪ What should you do next? ▪ Which ethical view will support your decision & actions? ▪ Are there any potential issues with the company’s corporate social responsibility in your

decision-making?

Analyze the case by completing the case study chart; write legibly. Apply Chapter 4 related material THROUGHOUT your case analysis.