You are a manufacturing engineer working for an aircraft company. The production lines you are responsible for are running at full capacity to keep up with the high demand. One day, you are called into a meeting where you learn that one of your supplies of bolts has been forging test results. The tests were never done, so no data exists to tell if the bolts in question meet your standards. You do not know how long the forging of the test results has been going on. You are only told that it has been awhile. This means that your whole production line including the planes ready to be delivered may be affected. You are asked to develop a plan to manage the crisis. What do you do?
Some background info:
1.) Bolts are tested in batches or lots. A specified number are taken out every batch and tested. The testing typically involves loading the bolts until they fail.
2.) The bolts do not have serial numbers so it is impossible to identify the lot number from which they came.
3.) The supplier who forged the tests supplies 30% of your inventory of all sizes of bolts.
4.) Bolts have their manufacturer's symbol stamped on the head of the bolt.
5.) It takes weeks to dissassemble or assemble an aircraft.
6.) Stopping your assembly line completely to dissassemble al aircraft could put your company in financial risk.
7.) Your customers are waiting on new planes and any delays could cause orders to be lost.
8.) The FBI arrested those who forged the test results and their business has been closed temporarily.
9.) Your entire inventory is store in bins by size, and each bin has a mixture of manufacturers.