Have you ever played the game of “Chinese Whispers”? You know the one where one person whispers something to one person and they then whisper it onto another until at the end of a series of whispers the original and the final are compared and they are nothing alike. Well that has happened with our order for LVL’s (Laminated Veneer Lumber).

The distance between the source (Carter Holt Harvey) and the customer is quite long. The product travels from the mill to a wholesaler, then to a retailer, then to a builder, then to the customer.

Carter Holt Harvey were chosen as our supplier not only because I had a contact there but because they have the best quality LVL’s. So I made contact, we came to an acceptable financial arrangement and went to pains to ensure that the order travelled through all of the regular channels. This way no one gets upset and every partner gets to add their value. (That’s the theory.)

So what happened? The person at the wholesaler was briefed, the retailer was briefed, the retailer did all of the take offs (Measuring how much was needed and what lengths to cut.) Unbe-known to anyone the person at the wholesaler left the company and forgot to document the deal. Once the wholesaler received the order from the retailer he reviewed his stock and realised that there was not enough Carter Holt Harvey product to supply the order. So he decided to substitute a rival brand for part of the order so it did not run late. (noble gesture, wrong decision) Once the order arrived at the site (over 1,000kms from the retailer) it was discovered that not only was part of the order not the correct brand, but there were significant quality issues with the product due to delamination. Check out the delamination photos. 

Now to everyones credit in this chain, once alerted, they were all supportive of getting things fixed.

So 9 beams, including 2 x 9.3 metre monsters have to be resupplied. This entails getting the right brand, some of them need to be treated as they are installed outdoors and they have to be freighted 1,000 kms on a semi-trailer to the site.  Ouch what an expensive exercise? And we have lost a week in the building schedule.

I guess the moral to the story is to keep the supply chain as short as possible, document the deal and make sure that you over communicate rather than assume everything is going to plans.

Well we are almost over the first hurdle, lets hope that there are not too many more like this in our path.