The last few months of 2011 have been rocky for people living on the East Coast.  The recent acts of nature that have plagued Connecticut have tested our ability to get work done in spite of power outages.  During Hurricane Irene, we lost power for 4 days and with the October nor’easter, we were 2 days without power.  Our disaster recovery plans were tested for sure. 

We hope that our customers have enough parts in stock so that they don’t need the parts in a short time frame.  That brings me to another thought- JIT manufacturing works well when everything goes according to plan.  While JIT saves money for the OEM who is not warehousing product, it does force, somewhere along the line, a manufacturer to warehouse product just in case there is a hiccup to the system, like a power outage or an unexpected increase in demand. 

So far, we’ve been lucky.  We’ve been able to weather our storms and keep our customers happy.  Let’s hope that 2012 brings more predictable weather AND more demand for components from our customers.