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That’s all well and good, but as soon as the mass manufacturing of the item halts, it’s no time at all before the assembly machinery is dismantled, the people reskilled, software updated, supply chains cut, etc. So when they’re approached to make some more, what are they going to do? The easy answer is turn down the request, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they did. Then they’d have said something like “the person who made these retired three years ago, the machinery is now scrap metal, the software for that machinery is on a floppy disk in a recycling centre somewhere, I don’t even know how who sold us the materials, and whatever we can do to replicate it would be considered a new product that has to go through testing again. So if you want this it’d take a lot of resources, and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.” To which the response would have been: “get it done.” I’m sure there was some added on to sweeten the deal, mind, but that isn’t the outrageous thing, nor would it be as dramatic as it sounds. The outrageous thing is that Boeing would have specifically outlined the end of production of components years in advance, and that would have been opportunity to buy and stockpile while the price was reasonable. Of course, some middle manager would have said “lol no it’s just a bin, we will just get one from Walmart”, and the complications would have only been realised when it was too late. |