A crystal ball on your desktop

The following was an actual conversation at ABC Company. Only the names,  sentence structure and content has been changed:

Purchasing Agent: Whoa geez, I just received this BOM from Jeff, our best engineer. This BOM calls out just one ACME Jim-Dandy Wagon. <sigh> Ordering just one is going to cost an arm and a leg. I don’t get a price break until I order ten. Our ACME sales rep is going to be able to buy a new boat with this order. Wait a minute! I’ll do a quick search in my SOLIDWORKS Enterprise PDM program to see if any other engineer has the Jim-Dandy wagon on an assembly he plans on requisitioning soon…or maybe I’ll look at some of my new dashboard reports Engineering Data Specialist Man produced for me. Wow! There are eleven more Jim-Dandy wagons on assemblies Jimmy has scheduled to be released next week.

Purchasing agent dials Jimmy’s extension.

Jimmy: Hello

Purchasing Agent: Jimmy, I see you have eleven Jim-Dandy wagons on assembly 112568 that is scheduled to be requisitioned. What is the likelihood that this will happen?

Jimmy: Pretty good, the customer just approved everything in our last design review. I expect to get this job off of my desk by tomorrow morning!

Purchasing Agent: Thanks Jimmy. <hangs up the phone> Wow, now that we have all of our engineering data stored inside of a database, I have a lot more data available to me and I can make smarter purchasing decisions. It is like having a window into the future. Thanks Engineering Data Specialist Man!