Dilbert Nails BAN

This Scott Adams Dilbert strip describes what the Basel Action Network is trying to do by substituting a "cell phone" testing procedure for a CRT procedure.

BAN's December 2009 presentation in Accra was designed to replace the Basel Secretariat's Annex IX B1110 (and footnotes) interpretation of used goods and cores with BAN's recommendation (present in their letters of protest to the Basel Secretariat) that "tested working" and "fully functional" should have been written into the convention instead.

BAN lost that argument, and is now trying to rewrite a decision tree so that there is no way out for a repairable CRT.  Those of us in the trade see Dilbert in action.

Here is the actual decision tree:

1) Does the CRT fit a valid, legal, commercial supply agreement, contract, or Purchase Order?
- IF IN DOUBT, LEAVE IT OUT

2) Does the quantity of the CRTs fit the maximum obligation or factory demand?

Then you test each one for each factory based on the PO.  Typically:

NO - Screen Burn
NO - R4 (Trinitron) CRTs
NO - Vacuum damage (requires LED or blacklight inspection)
NO - Heavy scratch

For the screen burn and heavy scratch, this is actually a cost based test.  You CAN sell screen burn, and factories CAN polish out scratches, but currently the demand for CRTs has pushed the price point down to where those repairs are not cost justified.  If the factory makes more money by breaking the monitor for copper than they would polishing it, you don't want to send it even if it is "polishable".

If a factory doesn't WANT 21" tubes (because they have too many in invetory, or no demand, or they have filled their quantity from a different order), then you cannot ship them.  It doesn't matter if they are tested working, it doesn't matter if they are new-in-box.  They don't want them.  You cannot ship something someone doesn't want.  In this way, WR3A's decision tree is stronger than BANs.  My factory has actually had to recycle CRTs which we had tested for a previous purchase order when the order expired and the factory we dealt with did not want them any more.

3) Does the factory reconciliation (post inspection) report verify the exporting country has the Quality Control in place to meet the purchase order?

4) Does the Agreement provide for proper recycling of

YES - Incidental breakage
YES - CRT glass recycling
YES - EHS Standards
YES - Replaced Parts, capacitors, boards, tuners, power supplies

As you can see, it is difficult to construct a decision tree which actually represents trade between two parties.  The end market and the supplier both have their own decision tree.  The supply chain has to fit both, like the blue and red lenses of 3D glasses.