What a Gem!

I'm starting a new blog feature called What a Gem! What a Gem! (WaG! ?) will document all the great quotes and quips I hear throughout the day. These may be by people I work with or people that I hear out on the town. I'm sure if you keep your ears open, you'll hear a few gems of your own. So here's the first one:

I was speaking with a manufacturing engineer about a purchased part that needs to be reworked to add holes, he said, "I don't think it needs a new part number. It's not like we're going to buy it under one number then rework and stock as another. We know what we have."

The WaG! aspect of this conversation is, Yes, one should purchase something under one part number, then stock it as a new number if it is reworked and stocked. Suppose you buy a zucchini, and the whole zucchini has a part number of ZCH0123, then you slice it and put it in a container. Now if you need some zucchini and ask someone to get it, they'll grab that container of the sliced zucchini, and you might get lucky in that you wanted the sliced version, but it was only luck.

Now let's expand on this analogy. Suppose you have sliced and diced zucchini in the fridge, in addition to the whole zucchini. Now you ask for "some zucchini" and get the wrong ingredients that you needed. You correct and indicate that you need the diced zucchini. Your assistant has to open all the containers to find the right one. If the whole zucchini was ZCH0123, the sliced ones were stored as ZCH0124, and the diced were ZCH0125, you wouldn't have any troubles getting exactly what you need.