Whirlwind Corporation

The reason why I chose this article is that it shows us how a company tackles a

situation when unforeseen or miscalculated mistakes arise from the negligence of

the company’s production lines. It also gives us a lesson on how to tackle the crisis

and how to come up with a solution for the problem.

This article discusses a global company that goes by the name of Whirlwind

Corporation. It focuses on the subsidiary of the company which involves

washing machines. They dispatched about 550,000 units in four years and

out of those 550,000 units, 500,000 of those units were recalled

immediately, due to the fire hazards created by the products. This damaged

the company’s brand equity and it also discussed about the multiple courses

of action that they can take to solve this problem.

The two pieces of advice that I learned from this article is, how a company

responds to problems and crisis whenever they arise and how they should take help

or hints from their competitor’s problem-solving techniques, such as Samsung’s.

First and foremost, option number one will not suffice as a course of action

because it will only increase the cost and labor of the company. The second

option on the other hand will only hurt the brand equity of the company

more, this will depict a negative message about the company and its
products. The third option that was given in this case study is probably the

only valuable course of action for this problem. The reason why I say its

value is because you get the old inventory back and you can actually

research on it and find the problem of the potential fire hazard and put these

recalled inventories back into the production line and turn them into a new

and improved product or recycle those parts for other driers or washing

machine. This will reduce your loss and it will also maintain the brand

equity which is the biggest concern for the company.