Permission and responsibility
Today I resolved:
- Why a tool could not be received into stock as finished. Someone had mistakenly gotten the impression that a whole line of tools was discontinued and had merrily set them as such. Nobody in the building knew what was going on, initially. I referred the matter to the guy who is supposed to manage that line of tools because somewhere, sometime, I learned his name. (Note: I have not yet succeeded, about a month on, in getting the guy who is supposed to make a certain component obsolete to do so. Such is ying and yang of the universe.)
- Why the system still thought it could drop intracompany orders for a part that had more allocation than stock on hand. Hundreds of pieces had been written off and the allocation had been left high and dry. But there were still as many pieces left as were allocated on this particular intracompany order, so it still got through the logic. And no, it was not a problem with the new program I am responsible for that is meant to make intracompany orders easier.
- Whether we could ship a nut, bolt, and washer from our factory to a customer, or whether it would be necessary for us to buy the parts, put them in a baggy, and ship them several states away to a warehouse before they could ship. It was not enough to ask the planner of the “assembly” order why it was scheduled to take so long (December). I had to follow up and specifically tell him that we actually had the nut, bolt, and washer in stock; so could he please release the order? And I had to make sure that they did in fact ship to the customer, and not on an intracompany order.
- Why we were so often finding it necessary to adjust intracompany order picked quantities and our inventory on hand, and why the intracompany orders wouldn’t ship. Actually I am blending in bit of a problem from last week into this one. But anyway it was intracompany orders. And no, it wasn’t a problem caused by the new program for intracompany orders that I am responsible for, although that program was used in the perpatration of the crime. Equal parts user error and a really failure-prone systems process. Too complicated to explain further.
- What we were going to do about a really important, nay vital, critical, crucial requirement for shipments going directly to any overseas location; which said requirement we had never heard of before and didn’t entirely understand; and that, in conjunction with a shipment that was to go directly overseas which was absolutely hotly needed to ship today. I said to just ship it the way we have been. (Please send the bail money now. I didn’t realize customs laws were so serious.)
- Why one of the locations that should have been on my report about expedite requests across the division was not on the report. There were actually some smaller ones that were also missing that I didn’t notice. I am the sole officially reporter on expedites in the division, the only one capable of figuring out how to turn the data into information, but nobody told me when they changed the name of some of the locations on the system and thus broke my reporting process. It was not hard to fix. It was just puzzling to discover.
I am not quite sure whether any of these things except the last is actually my job. I know I didn’t resolve what was wrong with the late shipment analaysis program I was supposed to have completely and uttery resolved by October 2nd. Or if not then than at least by July 31st. Oops wait… heh. Um. So anyway.
Oh, one more thing about the first thing. There are only two people in the plant who can change the status of an item and neither of them work here anymore. They got downsized or reorganized or opportunized or whatever it is that we call it. There is maybe a third person who can do it; also gone. There is still someone else who can do it–on vacation. Gone to a wedding. There might even be a fourth person–but gone. Another guy, the egineering manager, he might–except no, all he does is ask the guy who is at the wedding.
But! There is, actually, still one person in the plant–today! Who has the systems permissions to change item status. As long as you send someone else (who does not have the permission and also who is not me because I don’t have that kind of credibility, apparently) to show him how to do it.