When your actions -- or more precisely lack of action -- make a grown man cry, it's not a moment you are likely to forget.
Karl Wadensten hasn't forgotten. The president of privately held VIBCO Vibrators cites the incident as the catapult that launched his Wyoming, R.I.-based manufacturing company on its lean journey more than eight years ago.
The story goes like this: A salesman for a distributorship sells a large construction project on the benefits of purchasing products made by VIBCO, which manufactures electric, pneumatic and hydraulic vibrators for construction and industrial use. The salesman places the order with VIBCO, which provides him with a delivery date. VIBCO misses the delivery date. The manufacturer then misses a second delivery date, which prompts the salesman to call VIBCO on a Friday afternoon, in tears. His reputation and likely his job are on the line, "and here we are not holding up our end," says Wadensten. The construction firm is set to begin pouring concrete the following Monday.
Add to the story VIBCO's typical manufacturing operations work week, which is 40 hours in four-and-a-half days. Thus the plant floor is largely cleared out by the time VIBCO's customer service representative escalates the issue to Wadensten, who has been home sick.
The feel-good ending is that VIBCO shipped out the order on that Friday, after rallying employees to return to the manufacturing facility and push through the order.
Except, of course, it wasn't a feel-good ending. "It's not one of those orders you can celebrate. Yes, we did it," Wadensten says. "[But] we built no bridges with the relationship at this point. We did nothing for the brand of our company. It's sad that we had to get to that point to get something out for somebody."
