LATEST MANTLE UPDATE
March 18, 2010—Clarksville, TN, USA
Dear Aladdin Customer:
TELEPHONE CALLS: Every day, here at Aladdin, we receive numerous telephone calls asking when Aladdin Lox-On mantles will be back in stock. It seems that just about every time those callers remind us that we “promised” delivery of Lox-On mantles starting back in August of 2009, then it was September, then November, December and now it is February 2010 with mantles still not available. Everyone is frustrated—that’s a fact—and we apologize that the projected delivery dates have been missed.
OUR FRIEND, JUERGEN WEISSNER: As most of our customers know, Mr. Juergen Weissner accepted the challenge to leave his home in Australia and to go to the Philippines to supervise the production of Aladdin Lox-On mantles. His assignment was to build, from the ground up, all the manufacturing equipment necessary to produce mantles. The task before him was tremendous. All of the machinery had to be re-engineered, since no drawings existed. Prior to his departure to Manila, Juergen spent countless hours, over many, many months, designing new equipment including the most difficult of all—the burnout or sintering oven.
ORIGINAL ESTIMATE: The original estimated completion time, prior to Juergen arriving in the Philippines, was that it would require approximately two months or 60 days to build the equipment and begin production. That estimate seemed very reasonable last summer, prior to Juergen’s arrival on October 15, 2009. But after he did arrive, a multitude of problems quickly developed that required his immediate attention including the re-building of much of the equipment that he was already counting on for production including knitting machines, drying ovens, washing machines and so forth.
The re-building of existing equipment to support Aladdin Lox-On mantle production added an additional month so that the original schedule became 90 days rather than 60. In addition to the problems with old equipment, problems developed with materials for the newly designed Aladdin equipment not being made to the specs that Juergen has specified. This caused more delays, since these parts had to be re-made, and suddenly the 60 day schedule ballooned to 120 days. Needless to say, Juergen was very frustrated with his suppliers and so were all of us here at Aladdin since we couldn’t keep our good intentioned promises with our customers.
LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL: The situation had gotten so bad by early January—this past month—that we knew that something had to change or this nightmare might never end. Our new president and CEO, George Murphy, who previously managed General Electric’s world wide lighting operations, volunteered to go to Manila and personally take charge. George, with his vast engineering background, arrived the last week in January 2010 and immediately solved the mechanical problems associated with the burnout oven. Now, thanks to his intervention, the oven was ready and tested at the end of February. We received our first mantle samples the first week of March.
Upon their arrival, the mantle samples were subjected to mechanical strengths tests, then metered for light output readings. With this analysis, strength was good but additional modifications are still being perfected regarding light output. We are awaiting our second set of samples with these modifications as of mid-March. If these new samples have better output, actual production for inventory could commence mid-April at the rate of 500 plus mantles daily.
NEW STOCK: Beginning stock of 5000 mantles will be air freighted to Clarksville and we will allocate the initial production to cover as many dealers as possible.
There are many “ifs” with this schedule and more delays could be added, but we are doing our absolute best—every single day—to bring, high-quality, Aladdin Lox-On mantle back to market, as quickly as possible.
In closing, let all of us here at Aladdin thank you for your great patience and thank you, too, for being such great loyal customers. You are dear to our hearts.
Most cordially,
Tony Batts
General Manager
