[TenTec] Argonaut V "miss" and production of radios

[Ten-Tec Inc. Amateur Radio Sales]

At 09:42 PM 7/4/03 -0500, K4TAX wrote:
>  Still on products I specifically
>deal with, we offer the customer a 5 to 6 week lead time from point of order
>to delivery.  It is unfortunate that you were not able to get an Argo V off
>of the shelf for immediate delivery.

Hi:

I read all of the thread about the "out of stock" Argonaut V order and
went and checked back on what we did.  We sent out a message the
next morning indicating the radio was out of stock - I suppose had we
been a little quicker we would have sent it the same day that the order
was placed.   Our error.   I suppose it's always best on a rush item to
call us to see if we actually have it in stock.  This time, we didn't - we
do run out of various equipment from time to time.   Of course, it pains
me to lose a sale of our of our radios....

Unfortunately, we don't have software available that allows us to do
real-time inventory updating via our website store at the present time.
Hopefully for the future.


>Lets look at the other side of the picture from a manufacturing point.  To
>that end, I spent 15 years in electronic manufacturing for a large
>US/Japanese company.  Any product we produced had certain components  which
>had a lead time of up to 6 months and a few went into the 9 month period.
>Any product that was to ship next week has had certain long lead time orders
>placed to the supplier some 6 to 9 months earlier and this doesn't include
>the production line scheduling for lot size production.  In many cases, we
>may run a line/model only some 6 times per year.  Now, just what crystal
>ball is going to be accurate and tell exactly how many items of product X
>will be needed next week, specially when we have to look at purchasing parts
>some 38 weeks earlier?  It is a real dicey game of forecasting, balanced
>with cash outlay and warehouse space.  It seems simple as some folks say
>order a hundred extras on everything.  That ties up a lot of cash and a lot
>of warehouse space.  Now extend that into say 15 or 20 different models with
>an average parts count of some 1200 pieces each.  That 1200 pieces each time
>100 equals some 120,000 parts times 20 models is some 2.4 million parts.
>See how the numbers get out of hand quickly?  Production demand forecasting
>and lead times are not an exact science, just like weather forecasting.

The above is a reasonably accurate depiction of what goes on at Ten-Tec.

We schedule about 6 months in advance for production.  One of the hats
I wear (among others) is to schedule production for the factory - which I
do every couple of months and have for the past three years.   Ideally,
I'd like the last radio from the last production run to go out the door
the moment the first one from the next goes to stock; in practice it
never does work out that way.  We try to err on the side of having extra
inventory on hand, but sometimes it's not up to us - we're at the mercy
of everyone who delivers parts to us.  All it takes it one vendor to flake
out, go out of business, lose an order - anything - and then we're stuck.
Conversely, all it takes is a "run" on a piece of gear and it takes us some
time to try to build extra units due to the labor scheduling and long lead
times for component deliveries.

Scott Robbins, W4PA


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