I did not want to believe that an employee was stealing from the company. Yet the systematic disappearance of a certain size of hydraulic cylinder forced me to consider this disturbing possibility. My company manufactured industrial punch presses and had repetitive requirements for various sized cylinders. One particular size kept vanishing. If cycle counting reveals repetitive, unexplained variances, I put the part in a control group. The control counts for the mystery cylinder revealed losses even on days when there had been no usage. I realized if my company could design a product that required a hydraulic cylinder, so could someone else. I began to ask the more mechanically-inclined employees what could be manufactured with a hydraulic cylinder but without the fabrication facilities of a general factory.
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