eck and eck

Case #2
A major aircraft company was building a part in-house from a forging with scrap rates routinely exceeding 50%. Eck & Eck was asked to bid the part on shop-overload. Eck sent back 10 parts for review, parts immediately proclaimed “the best iterations of this part ever made.” When the customer decided to go to permanent farm-out for the part, the bid went to another shop, a shop incapable of manufacturing this particular forged part, a shop owned by a friend of the Ecks who did not know that Eck & Eck had made the original parts. Consequently, this shop subcontracted the parts to other companies who quickly proved unequal to the task. And finally the customer decided that Eck & Eck, the provider of those 10 perfect review parts, should become the farm-out provider of record. The customer later accelerated the delivery schedule and at last was persuaded that Eck & Eck should deliver “the best parts ever made” directly.

Case closed.