Is anyone else having a problem getting stuff?

[Allen Bookout]

I orderd a Jet table saw from a dealer over six weeks ago and a few days ago it was backorderd again with a delay of four more weeks. I cancelled the order and ordered a Uni for Woodworker's Supply and it is not in stock but should be avilable in a week and a half, or so they tell me. I ordered a DC from Penn State and it is taking over six weeks to get all of the order in. I ordered tennis strngs from Tennis Warehouse over a month ago and they are still not available to be shipped.

I do not ever remember paying for so many products and not being able to get them in a resonable amount of time.

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[Doug Shepard]

Well it doesn't explain the tennis strings, but suppliers of anything that has steel in it are currently having pretty severe difficulties. The Chinese are buying up all the steel they can get their hands on. It's causing a lot of shortages here in the US, and elsewhere's. In addition to slowing down the supply chain, it's caused prices to rise. Can't say for sure that this is the reason your particular items were delayed, but it is a pretty major problem at the moment.

[Mike Mayer]

And the ships and containers that carry the stuff here are all made with steel. And those ships use petroleum products for fuel. So there are shortages and/or price increases at many points of the supply chain.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

In the current business world, one of the most recent major changes has been minimizing inventory. For tax reasons, most businesses have minimized their inventory, relying on their suppliers to either stock items or be able to provide items within a reasonable amount of time. The unfortunate side of this is that often the suppliers often have minimized their inventories too. If an item becomes suddenly popular, the minimal inventories aren't enough to meet market demand and it takes weeks to get supplies from around the world without spending a huge amount for rapid shipping. If the manufacturer doesn't have inventory to ship it can take weeks to tool up and manufacture an item and then the shipping delays kick in...........It's the business trend that's been coming into play for several years now.......

[Mark Hulette]

This may also be just the beginning... the pilots' union for UPS are in talks and they evidently are not going well. Rumor is a strike is emminent. IF that happens, no telling how long things bought from a UPS-only seller will take to get to you. Guess Fedex and the other guys will make a killing!

[Rich Konopka]

In the current business world, one of the most recent major changes has been minimizing inventory. For tax reasons, most businesses have minimized their inventory, relying on their suppliers to either stock items or be able to provide items within a reasonable amount of time. The unfortunate side of this is that often the suppliers often have minimized their inventories too. If an item becomes suddenly popular, the minimal inventories aren't enough to meet market demand and it takes weeks to get supplies from around the world without spending a huge amount for rapid shipping. If the manufacturer doesn't have inventory to ship it can take weeks to tool up and manufacture an item and then the shipping delays kick in...........It's the business trend that's been coming into play for several years now.......

Ken, I think you are dead on. Nowhere has this been more apparent than HD. I was looking at Doorlocks and they were all special order items. The same with plumbing fixtures. I went to Lowes and voila. Had what we were looking for.. May explain why Lowes had 36% increase over HD's 13%.

I think Allen's rant is legitimate and no a coincidence.

[mike malone]

[QUOTE=Allen Bookout]I orderd a Jet table saw from a dealer over six weeks ago and a few days ago it was backorderd again with a delay of four more weeks. I cancelled the order and ordered a Uni for Woodworker's Supply and it is not in stock but should be avilable in a week and a half, or so they tell


hi allen
Oneida's gorillas are in stock....ship in about 5 days if interested
mike

[Doug Shepard]

Ken, I think you are dead on. Nowhere has this been more apparent than HD. I was looking at Doorlocks and they were all special order items. The same with plumbing fixtures. I went to Lowes and voila. Had what we were looking for.. May explain why Lowes had 36% increase over HD's 13%.

I think Allen's rant is legitimate and no a coincidence.

The U.S. automakers have had their eyes on this for a while too and are getting fairly serious about implementing it at a vehicle level (they already do this at a part level). I think within about 10 years you're going to see a lot less cars/trucks on dealer lots and a lot more special-order only stuff being sold. They're basing their whole premise on that no-inventory, supplier-stocking, fast-shipping theory. It all looks good on paper, but one little glitch in the system causes all sorts of cascading events that add up to hard-to-get stuff. The Big 3 are large and commanding enough with their suppliers that they'll just blame the problem on them, instead of looking inward and re-examining their own game plan.

[John Hart]

Yup...It's going to take a while for manufacturers and suppliers to get this fine tuned. The current term is "Just in Time" delivery, which describes the process of trying to achieve zero inventory while maintaining on time deliveries. If you have 10 suppliers of parts to build one machine, and all those suppliers are trying to maintain zero inventory, then you are at the mercy of their ability to supply you. Essentially, this is what ISO900X is all about....Getting everyone to perform the same...ISO = Equal

[Ken Fitzgerald]

I work for a major corporation and provide maintenance on some very expensive large scale medical equipments. The company went through this process a few years ago. For a very short time we had a reduced inventory of replacement parts. Needless to say our Customers justifiably weren't receptive to the idea! It didn't take long before we felt the heat. You don't want this type of situation when your customer has a relatively long buying cycle. Say you buy a piece of equipment for 1-2 million dollars. You don't replace it for say 7 years and maybe do one 3/4 million dollar upgrade during that 7 year period. If during that 7 years they get a sour taste in their mouth about service, lack of parts, reliability, the next buying cycle they buy from the competitor. End result........if you're lucky 15 years later you may recover from one bad business decision.

These are just business decisions that a lot of "Business Degrees" are taught to make. While they may make good business sense in theory.....often theory and practise don't always agree........In today's business world decisions are made to fix a short term problem with little regard to the long term effect.

You might get away with it at the retail level......borgs and such but on a larger scale you can cut your throat for a long period of time.

At one time I wouldn't have but one brand of car. Then in 1983 I ordered a new one. 4 years later when the 5th transmission started going out (never lost a tranny in any other car I've owned) I replaced it with a 1-year old foreign import that we drove for 16 years. A combination of a caloused attitude towards a customer and obvious reliability problems.....I've bought several vehicles since then....will I consider brand X.....maybe....but they will have to be significantly better than the competition before I buy from them again.

I'm off my soap box.......sorry... :o

[Rich Konopka]

We did a project with GE a few years back where we were able to forecast thier demand from orders, then build a schedule where they can look at their global manufacturing capacity and determine when the job can be scheduled and at what plant. It also coordinated the suppliers and their ability to supply the parts to meet the schedule.

Pretty cool stuff but it gets back to reducing inventory and lowering costs. That is the driving factor in staying competitive in this global economy.

I wouldn't be surprised if it penetrates further in the WW world. Festool does it with its distributors. They take the order and it ships from the factory warehouse.

[Greg Mann]

Allen's original post shows the conundrum that exists between globalization and just-in-time. They are concepts that are at cross purposes. As an automotive supplier I have seen this play out for some time and it is discouraging. In the mid-nineties the supply chain mantra was; reduced inventories, partnerships, single-source suppliers, collaboration, advanced planning, etc. Now, it is selling price. There are many sub-suppliers who went to great efforts to reduce their parts per million rejects (PPM) to extemely low levels, streamlined their operations so that they could be more efficient at delivery without the cushion of high inventory and then got blindsided by globalization. Competition with the rest of the world is one thing, but the failure to recognize the advantages of proximity is something different altogether. The Japanese carmakers understand this and are using it to great advantage. While the Detroit Three are running all over the world looking for cheap prices, and excacerbating the problems of just-in-time, the Japanese are sourcing here in the States more and more so that JIT can work. The North American content in their vehicles is going up and up every year while the opposite is happening with Detroit. Who do you want to reward with your purchases?

Festool's approach is a type of hybrid, perhaps like an auto dealer with one of each model on his lot for test drives but no burdensome 100 day inventory. By not selling to distributors, thereby burdening them with costly inventory and bloating the market with excess product, they hold it in their wharehouses. When the orders come in they can track sales trends daily, avoiding the fits and starts of batch purchases from dealers that blurs and delays good purchasing data. With today's technology, orders placed by their ISAs can be immediately factored into production scedules in Germany, thereby shortening the supply chain and allowing reduced inventories in spite of globalization.

Greg

[Brian Hale]

I ordered a performance turbo (B-1-2-EX3) for my Dodge Cummins diesel 6 weeks ago and the maker won't promise a delivery at all. Seems the folks that supply a couple of the parts aren't able to get raw materials to produce them. At least they didn't charge my card yet....

Brian

[Dale Rodabaugh]

A couple yrs.ago I ordewred a General mortising machine at a tool sale in Hartville,OH.I ordered it right from the factory rep.who was at the sale.He said it would be in in about 2wks.3 months later it arrived.Hartville tool told me the rep had taken several orders at that sale and told everyone the same thing.Other than that one time I have always had good luck.

[Bill Turpin]

We recently ordered some mixed gas valves, filters, regulators, and guages that were mostly made in Germany from a vendor in Australia. They were manufactured to European specs for equipment to be shipped to the far east. The shipment spent eleven days in customs until documentation of EVERY country of origin for all the parts was supplied. The last time we ordered in October, the shipment was here in 36 hours. Big brother strikes again. :(

Bill in WNC mountains