From: dst+@cs.cmu.edu (Dave Touretzky)
Subject: more Piper weirdness (but not all bad)
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 07:36:17 GMT

The following message is forwarded (with permission) from 
Michael R. Jones <mrjones@crdec8.apgea.army.mil>.

................................................................

Dave,

I've been following your "trials" with great interest.  As the
Maintenance Officer for a military "flying club" with an Arrow that
had a nose gear door break and partially depart the aircraft inflight
several months ago, I can identify with your frustrations.  We were
originally told that the gear door was available and on order and
should have been delivered in several days.  Hah!  Several weeks later
(and many phone calls to Skytech at MTN).  We discovered, from Skytech
that the part was out of stock and delivery was estimated at 26 weeks.
Junk yards didn't have it.  We even contemplated a midnight supply
scheme. ;-)  

Normally, our paid manager does the ordering and I stay out of his
way, but when it got to be several months, I got on the phone and
called Piper, talked to Leah, (bet you did too!) and we had a very
interesting conversation.  I've been ordering parts for about 20
years and, if I'm in a hurry, the first thing I tell vendors is AOG.
(I've been amazed at how well that has worked over the years.)  In
any case, Leah tells me that they have one on back order and it's
not AOG (From someplace named Skytech - Heh! That's us).  She also
tells me that the vendor delivery time was 26 weeks from then.  Then
she says to hang on and I can hear the keys on the computer, then
she says, let me check and see if we have the raw materials to make
it.  You could have knocked me over with a feather, but I didn't
fall off the log yesterday, so I remained conscious.  Turns out they
did have the materials, (helluva database!) so she said she would
call me back the next day with a production date.  She didn't.  We
gave her a few days and put the manager on the case.  He called once
a day for a week.  She finally explained the system to him.  Every
day, customer service sends a list of parts to production. 
Production looks at the list and decides what they have materials to
make and estimates a production date for the items they can make. 
Then they send the list back to customer service.  If production
isn't sure when they can make it, they don't put a date on it.  That
was where our door was, somewhere between now and retirement.  So,
it was don't call us, etc.  Oh well, we tried.  That was three weeks
ago.  Last Monday, we got a call from Skytech to come get our door. 
The Arrow flies again.     

I never much cared for Piper products that weren't built in Lock
Haven, but I'm impressed with this service from a company that has
one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.   

Glad you're flying again.

Mike

By the way, if you think this would be interesting to post, go ahead,
I get the net as a digest, and second hand at that.  I've posted stuff
before and I'm not sure it goes anyplace but the digest.


 ____________________________________________________________________.
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|  _________|__________              Michael R. Jones, CFI/AIGI      | 
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