Case Studies

July 21st, 2005

Superbowl Solutions!

Who ya? gonna call?

Here?s the email that started it all on the Thursday night before the Game:

From:
To: engineering@thermalcorp.com
Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2005 6:33 PM
Subject: Engineering Department

Hi there,

I am (excluded) with (excluded) in Jacksonville, Florida. Mike Stiles of R&D Tooling has sent heater bands from our Aoki tooling to you to manufacture replacements. According to Mike, they can be produced by late next week. Unfortunately, on that time schedule we will in all likelihood lose our national customer who has ordered over 700,000 bottles to be delivered immediately. Because we are a small company, this will have a devastating effect on our ability to continue in business.

I humbly request (beg and plead really) that your company find a way to fabricate the replacement parts over the weekend so that we can pick them up from your facility on Sunday, allowing us to be back in production sometime Monday. I realize this is a great deal to ask but I assure you we are willing to pay for this extraordinary service.

Please have someone from your company contact me as soon as you receive this email, so that we might be able to work out a schedule that will allow us to get back into production in time for us to save this account.

I can be reached anytime at (phone number removed). To say that your help will be greatly appreciated is without a doubt one of the greatest understatements I have made to date. I look forward to hearing from you early tomorrow morning.

Many Thanks,

xxx Containers, LLC
Jacksonville, Florida
(Used by permission)

On Friday morning, meetings were set, decisions made and the game was on. It wasn?t going to be a walk in the park. But even though flights were full and there were no vacancies to be found, Thermal decided to design and build these heaters for delivery on Super Bowl Sunday.

These were no typical ?roll ?em out the door? heaters. They had hinges, shrouds, six different sizes and had to be made right, fast and with no mistakes. Fourth and goal to go and punting was not an option. It was going to take teamwork. Customer Service planned logistics and served as liaison, Engineering quarterbacked with drawings and tests, the front office readied the teams for game day and the front line, Manufacturing took the hits, made the plays and gave the extra effort to make everyone involved a winner.

Saturday afternoon, the heaters passed QC and were loaded into the trunk of the car to make the six hundred mile trip from Thermal Corporation to Jacksonville. It?s a ten hour trip by car, but it was the only way to get there in a timely fashion that weekend.

Manufacturing returned to the dressing room, jubilant in winning this quarter of the game. Less than seventy-two hours later, heaters, thermocouples and a Thermal Corporation engineer were there without a snowball?s chance of going to one of the world?s greatest sporting events happening just a few miles away.

Thermal Corporation arrived at the plant early Sunday morning as the plant?s maintenance department uncrated a new manifold for the Aoki machine. We installed the heaters and then discovered that no connectors had been provided to connect heaters to machine. After searching, an old set of connectors were discovered on a mold that was not being used. Both heater and thermocouple wires had to be traced and diagrammed before the new heaters and thermocouples could be connected. Sunday evening arrived, everything was wired, the Super Bowl was in full swing and plant maintenance worked on installing the new and freshly wired manifold.

Monday morning arrived with a new champion in New England after a close and hard fought game. This bowl however, had gone into sudden death overtime. Everything had been installed and the thermocouples all read incorrectly. It turned out that at an earlier time, one of the connectors had been damaged on the machine and the connector had been rigged which essentially reversed the wires. Changes were made and we were in field goal range for the win.

We powered up and waited. The temperature indicators ticked off degrees like a scoreboard clock in reverse until set points were reached and temperatures steadied. Zone by zone, over and over until it was assured the machine would operate.

Game won.

In business, teamwork matters. The team mates you choose will carry you over the goal line for a win or share in your losses. We like to think we?re good team players here at Thermal Corporation and we believe that in helping our customers win, especially when the chips are down, is the best way to assure that we are winners in our own business.