Find out why Gallo Mechanical, a prominent mechanical contractor and manufacturer located in the Gulf Coast, had to shut down their TigerStop. Their entire prefabrication facility came to a screeching halt when their TigerStop efficiency was too good.It was a bombshell of an email to receive. The innocuous-seeming email sitting in our inbox was ticking away, waiting for its moment to explode. Once read, blood-curdling screams pierced the skies above the TigerStop factory. Its neighbors peered through their curtains to bear witness to the terrible awful they could only imagine was happening within the manufacturing shop’s walls.
You may think we’re being a bit melodramatic. Well, keep reading. You will soon understand. Or maybe don’t read, for what you read will forever change you.
Now, it’s only fair to those daring enough to read this passage that we give you some adequate context so you too can understand the full impact of the events that unraveled. So listen carefully. This is what went down to cause that disasterly email to float into our inbox.
A Cold October Day
After touring the Dynamic Systems Inc. fabrication shop on a blustery October day, Ray McDonald, Gallo Mechanical’s general manager and fabrication coordinator, knew just the equipment he needed to order for his prefabrication shop. Ray was in a peer group with Doug Smith of Dynamic Systems Inc., and for months, Doug had been talking up his new TigerStop automated positioner coupled with GTP’s STRATUS software. Doug had been touting the scrap-reducing and productivity-increasing benefits of the system for cutting copper pipe. Before Ray’s tour was complete, he has already ordered a TigerStop for Gallo Mechanical.
The TigerStop would be used to accurately position and cut an array of materials for Gallo Mechanical’s prefabrication division, including copper, PVC, Aquatherm and Uponor pipe, and other plastics. The TigerStop was built in the company’s Vancouver, WA, shop and shipped to Gallo Mechanical for installation. Ray and his team got to work and quickly set the machine up.
The Dreaded Email
What happened next was completely unexpected. Doug Smith of Dynamic Systems Inc. opened his email. One unread message flashed in his Outlook inbox from none other than his friend Ray McDonald of Gallo Mechanical. Doug carefully read the email, and with a swift click of his pointer finger, he forwarded the shocking email to TigerStop.
Can you guess what it said?
Doom Filled Day, November
FROM: Doug Smith, Dynamic Systems Inc.
TO: TigerStop
“Dear TigerStop, I just spoke with Ray from Gallo Mechanical in New Orleans. He purchased a TigerStop after his visit to our Houston shop.”
So far so good, right? WRONG. The email continues …
“The president of the company called Ray two days after the installation and asked how the TigerStop was doing. Ray told him, ‘We had to shut it down already.'”
Sheer terror swept through our veins. What could possibly have happened that was so awful that the machine was shut down after two days? We continued reading the dreaded email.
“Gallo’s President became upset and asked what happened.”
Yes! Tell us! What happened?
“Ray explained to his boss that they had cut three weeks’ worth of work on the TigerStop in two days and didn’t have any more room to store the cut pipe … .”
To find out what happened next, click here. We went directly to the source and asked Gallo Mechanical to fill us in.