How You Produce Your Product is More Important than the Product Itself
Bob owned a very successful bakery that specialized in large wedding cakes, but a bad thing was about to occur.
Its procedure called for his staff to bake the cake two days before the actual event. The next morning, they would ice and decorate the cake. Then, later in the afternoon they would prepare it for delivery.
On this particular weekend they were scheduled to deliver three large wedding cakes. During the packaging and preparation for delivery of one of the orders on a Friday afternoon they reviewed the order and discovered that the chocolate cake they had baked was in fact supposed to be a marble cakethe brides family referred to the cake as chocolate and vanilla, but it was written down as chocolate.
Although they had a procedure that called for verifying all wedding cake orders in writing with the person placing the original order, this process was not followed in this situation. So, at the last minute, the cake had to be thrown out and entirely redone.
The good news was the customer ended up being very pleased with the second cake, the marble one. However, Bobs company failed to execute properly, since the cake-verification process they had in place was not followed.
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