Imagine that it's December and you're ready to place the order for shimmer bathing suits that will fill the stores. So, on December 30th, you place the order. One week later, on January 6th, you get a
phone call from the bathing suit manufacturer saying that their equipment broke down, they had to
declare bankruptcy, and they can't produce the bathing suits. This is not good news. You know that it
takes at least four months to create this large of an order, so by the time you find and sign a contract
with a new production company and they get their team set up to produce the bathing suits, the
earliest they can probably ship the swimwear is July. That won't work at all! People want to start
buying bathing suits in April or May.
You've got a big problem on your hands, and if you don't solve the problem, you're going to lose your
job. If we apply the four-step problem-solving process to this scenario and seek to understand the
problem and create a strong plan, what might we do?