To extend or not to extend the ship date!

FIRST General Forum
#61

I guess I am getting a bit amused by the “you have deadlines in business” argument. In an earlier life, I used to do organizational process management modelling. So I know that deadlines are extended all the time. (How many due dates did Vista have?) Furthermore, I can dredge up several examples from memory of businesses working with other businesses around extending deadlines because of snow, flooding or other bad weather. Even people in the business world can be gracious and professional when things are screwed up because of weather and other unavoidable/unpredictable events.

That said, there are real practical reasons for not extending the deadline, at least beyond a day or two. The chief of which is the time it takes to ship things to the first regional. As for FIRST “holding the shippers feet to the fire”, that is a little ungracious considering how much shipping is donated to FIRST.

#62

Yes some deadlines can be extended, some can be missed with only a one of two thousand a day fine.
And some like the one I’m dealing with now are hard and fast.
Be done by the 28th or find new job, cost company hundreds of millions, and flush a million dolors down the tubes.

And yes maybe holding the shippers feet is a little hard but, if you going hold deadline for one then you should for all …
btw, back when I drove for SDS hauling nuclear medicines… we had to make our deliveries no and ifs or buts about it. Bad things happen if the stuff we hauled was late.
Anyhow picks ups can be made… they just might take longer. So you plan for it.

#63