Building a wrapping machine is always “hurry up and wait.” First sales, then engineering are busy, then purchasing and manufacturing. Like the pig in the belly of a snake, it is a big lump at each step of the way and cannot be distributed evenly.

As much as we try to plan for this, it does not happen according to our schedule. Vendors do evil things like take vacation. Even employees, yes employees, expect vacation. It is almost impossible to plan for these delays when you are first quoting a customer, months before  the machine order actually gets to the shop floor. In fact, even though we always build in some slack, we find ourselves behind due to some unforeseen event or series of events. In the summer this is often vacation.

This summer we are seeing a new cause – shrinking capacity at vendors who are overloaded but unwilling to expand capacity since they are afraid of the fall and winter, shrinking inventory because they are not keeping things in stock at old levels. Right now we are working six days a week to make up for this and still behind schedule. Given the nature of how things happen, we will undoubtedly be slow on the floor in another two months and wonder where our summer went.

No customer likes to think that they are the one who is losing their delivery slot but cascading events have their way of happening. The vacation of a vendor affects our ability to build one machine according to the schedule. The late delivery on one machine can affect the delivery on the next. Dealing with the cascading effect is almost impossible to explain, so let us apologize instead.

A big sorry to those who did not get their timely delivery!

A big sorry and grateful thank you to those diligent and thoughtful employees who saw their summer through the open bay doors or the fading sunset.

A big thank you to all for your patience, hard work and persistence!!