Errare humanum est, perseverare autem diabolicum [To err is human, but to persist is diabolical] proclaimed Sant’Agostino.
It is impossible to have worked for so many years without ever having made a mistake. Economists make mistakes when drawing scenarios. Similarly companies make mistakes. In a post a while back I wrote that when a supplier is wrong, it is only correct, in my opinion, to allow a second chance, provided, however, that whoever makes the mistake takes responsibility for it. If this does not happen and that supplier immediately goes on the attack, perhaps trying to blame someone else for the failure, then the situation is completely different.
But today, do companies know how to take responsibility for their own mistakes? That depends.
Meanwhile, it must be said that there is no customer who expects a supplier to be perfect, though of course the less this happens the better. What makes the difference is the reaction because no-one likes to be caught out. The problem comes in fact from trying to cover ones mistakes with everything that is then consequential.
When it comes to mechanics and, even more so, precision micromechanics, covering a mistake is highly complex. When the price in question is inconsistent, that is the case, plain and simple. It can’t be so only slightly. Ideally, errors should be avoided and, if they do occur, the problem must be addressed and resolved.
Nevertheless, it isn’t rare to find producers who, even where they have created pieces that are substandard rather than redoing them, deliver them anyway, omitting any accompanying documentation that could prove non-conformity and, in fact, hoping that the customer does not notice. If this happens (and unfortunately in the past we have seen this) that supplier has closed any possibility of future collaboration with us, because – beyond the error itself – the relationship of trust has failed.
But what if we make a mistake?
Those “very few(!)” times that MICROingranaggi has made a mistake, the whole company has been widely involved: the problem of the customer has immediately become our problem and therefore we have done everything in our power to solve it as soon as possible.
Let me give you a concrete example of this. Where non-compliant material has been delivered, it goes without saying that it must be replaced, but in the meantime the priority must be to continue the production line of the customer. How? In the meantime it should be considered that it is reasonably impossible that all the parts of a batch may not be compliant and that therefore the definition of the control grid was probably wrong. First of all, therefore, a selection of the products of an entire batch must be made in order to identify and eliminate the waste, and thus to allow the customer to use the pieces that instead are immediately seen to be compliant. Obviously awaiting reproduction of the missing ones.
Moral….
