Because parts is parts, right?

Flashback to the late 1990s, when this big aerospace/defense contractor acquires a competitor -- although it takes a few years for them to convert to a common manufacturing system, according to a pilot fish on the scene.

And when they do, there's big trouble. "Immediately after the conversion, the Bill of Materials (BOM) parts expansion ran for days on the mainframe," fish says. "There was no obvious cause. The data center people would kill the process, assign it a high priority, ensure there was plenty of temporary space, and rerun. After several days, they'd kill it again.

"The only thing that had changed from the last successful run was the migration of the acquired division's assemblies. This was becoming critical, since the old system was shut down and they couldn't perform the Materials Requirements Planning and inventory purchases."

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