Nick Talbot had a problem. As the master planner for Hardy Custom Engraving he was responsible for ensuring that they meet the sometrmes conflicting priorities of sales, production, and finance. Something has gone tembly wrong, and all Nick's plans have failed. Despite his best elforts to level production and still meet promised delivery dates, two customers will not be getting their shipments this week. Jim "Buster" Hush had just pointed out the obvious by declaring in front of everyone in the meeting that, "You should have seen it coming II", but Nick couldn't see how.Nick stared at the latest output from the MRP system on his desk for K-1010, the product that was ruining his career. How could things have gone so wrong in two weeks? When Leona Hardy had taken over the company from her father, she came with some new ideas, marry of which were already paying big dividends, and the company was really starting to grow. One of these ideas was the introduction of wood products to the existing line of metal fabricated inems. There is no arguing that the line is proving popular with customers (and the sales force) resulting in higher revenues and peofits. Demand for K-1010 is a perfect example of this. Who would have thought that there was such a big market for laser engraved hardwood key chains? Well, the report told the tale.Hardy had been selling the new key chains for the last 15 weeks or so. Demand started slow, but grew steadly. Everything had been going according to plan. There had been no problems with the supplier of the oak stock from which the key chains were cut. The line had reported no problems. No shortages, no production problems, but no finished goods when the system was telling him there should be ample coverage for the current customer orders. They just weren't there.When he first got wind of the problem, Nick had thought that sales might be up to their old tricks of booking new business inside the frozen zone. He had floated that in the meeting without giving it much thought. That had really lit Buster's fuse. Buster was adamant that no new orders were being booked inside the lead time for the key chains. He had already heard from Leona that those kinds of actions were not going to be tolerated. He remembered her distinctly saying. "This is a new product line and we wanted to make sure that we don't start off by making promises we can't keep. "Buster knew it wouldn't be wise to test her on this (at least not right away), so he had instructed all his reps to pary very close attention to the(5) Trillium CollegeSCMM-100 Inventory Control