You Can Finish the Paperwork: Shortly After a Product Is Manufactured

摘要

From time to time we each experience the hurry to get somewhere, only to end up waiting for someone or something else. Today's air travel seems to be nothing but "hurry-up-and-wait": After you race to the airport two hours before your flight time, theplane ends up departing two hours late. Businesses suffer from the same disorder. For example, in the biopharmaceutical industry, this phenomenon is often evident in all the documentation that must be completed before a product can be released for shipment. Most of us seldom give it much thought, but delaying the shipment of a drug (especially a blockbuster) can cause business executives to become quite agitated. "Delayed shipments of our blockbuster drug could mean another 'beating' from Wall Street analysts and our shareholders," an executive might bemoan, "more warehousing costs associated with quarantined product, and making more concessions to retain our customers. It just seems like we are always hurrying up and then waiting."