Lee: Malcolm, Andrea…Have you heard the news? The strike’s off!
Malcolm: What? That’s great news. Does that mean we’ll get all our order after all?
Lee: Well it’s not as good as that I’m afraid. They’ve already loaded up with the 60% of goods they promised us. But they haven’t got the capacity to load up the missing 40%; that’s going to have to come in 24 hours.
Malcolm: 24 hours, eh? Where does that leave us with the production run?
Lee: Well they are delivering 60% of all packaging items – wrappers, boxes, cartons the lot. So we can at least do complete orders of all that 60% and get them shipped out to our customers.
Malcolm: Hmm – so who’s going to have to wait then?.
Andrea: Hi Lee. Sorry about that. Did I hear you say we are going to get all of the supplies?
Lee: Yes. We’ll get the first 60% as planned – tomorrow. But we won’t get the rest until 24 hours later. So, we’ve still got a problem but it isn’t as serious.
Andrea: Can I do anything to help?
Lee: Yes I think you can. Why don’t you and I look at the orders and see who might be able to wait. Some of the smaller shops won’t want to wait. They’ll buy their goods from someone else if they can’t have ours. Let’s go to my office – if that’s all right with you Malcolm?
Malcolm: Well Andrea’s Nellie’s secretary really, but whilst this crisis is on I’ve sort of commandeered her to help us. Nellie’s got a lot on her plate with the advertising programme and PR of Country Crumbles so I don’t think she’ll miss Andrea for an hour or two. So yes, off you go you two. See what you can come up with by way of damage limitation – we don’t want to upset any very important customers, do we?
Lee: Right here we are then.
Andrea: I’ve already printed off a couple of copies of the client list.
Lee: Good thinking Andrea.
Andrea: And I’ve highlighted all of the small shops in green, and all our most loyal and regular customers in red.
Lee: Well they deserve to have their goods on time first of all don’t they?
Andrea: Can you do the sums, Lee?
Lee: Yes, hang on ..... let me just get to my trusty computer…
Lee: So there we are then. We can send out these 85 orders on time the day after tomorrow and we can also offer all of the other clients 50% of their order by the end of tomorrow, with the balance coming the day after.
Andrea: All of them?
Lee: Yes. 50% on time and the rest the following day.
Andrea: Mmm. That doesn’t seem too bad does it?
Lee: Well it should be enough to stop any of them trying to get their products from another manufacturer, but the extra transport costs are going to really eat into our margins on this order. We could end up with a whacking loss if we’re not careful. It may be worth it to keep our good name for reliability and service, but on the other hand it may be worth a few calls to the clients in green to see if any of them can wait for 48 hours – till our next regular delivery to them. If so we can really cut back on extra costs. If some ... around thirty ..... clients say yes, we’ll be ok. We’ll cut the deliveries by half.
Andrea: Shall I start making some phone calls?
Lee: Yes. That would be great. Start with the biggest orders
Malcolm: How you getting on you two? Any success?
Lee: Yeah, well I think between us Andrea and I have nearly cracked this one! Crisis nearly over!
Malcolm: Excellent! You make a good team, you two. Nellie had better watch out or she’ll be losing her secretary to the finance and accounts department.
