Some Friday fun - A Kindle for your chaos!

I was the planning manager at a technology company in Ottawa, Canada, that wanted to diversify its supplier base. The company reduced the amount of internal manufacturing and sourced about seventy-five percent of a high volume, critical product to a large manufacturer in Europe. The product was very sensitive to the manufacturing process and the technology transfer of the product seemed to be going well. We were three months into an internal volume ramp down with new deliveries flowing in from the new supplier when the first defective part was discovered from a customer return. The company now had three months of high volume defective components on the shelves, furious customers, and no visibility into future supply. When the defect was fixed and the internal and outsourced supply slowly starting to recover, it was the planning group that managed the panic for the next several months. I am reminded of spring when the mother bird flies with a mouthful of food toward her nest of screaming chicks.