Wonderful World of Manufacturing

Last week was a busy one (and frustrating too!). That's the reason for not posting. Several things happened, that made life more difficult:
1. Steve refuses to wrap softer caramel; hence we had to struggle to get the right texture.
2. When the caramel is too hard, Steve also freaks out. In fact, two of the blades that cuts the caramels into the neat little cubes broke off last Thursday. As a result, we had to deal with replacing the blades. A tool guy came out on a short notice to take a look at the broken blades. After short consideration he announced that he has to take all of the broken blades plus the "healthy" one that we had to pry out as an example (after which it became unusable) to his shop and he would call me later with the verdict on how much it's going to cost. The blades are made of hardened steel (similar to what the kitchen knives are made of). Therefore, the replacement blades would have to be the same too. 1/2 hr later the guy calls back to tell that 4 blades that would be made of stainless steel (a temporary solution at best) would cost me $490. Naturally, I gasped at this obvious fleecing and started making more phone calls to find another alternative. Lo and behold: the blades were finally located by our mechanics, Larry and George in Detroit. Thanks to a guy named Dirk More (Moore?) who has a machine and tool shop there, I received 4 beautiful hardened blades the next morning at the acceptable cost of $64/each.
Additionally, Dhruba also found a shop in Racine, WI that fabricated two stainless steel blades for us for $200. they did a decent job, especially considering short notice.
After such an eventful week all we could do is retire for the Labor Day weekend, which was not entirely Labor-free. In fact, for the first time in my life I experienced a twinge of irritation at the fact that Monday was a holiday (darn it, I could have made caramels!). Here is why (so that you don't think I am completely insane)
We have a big event coming up this weekend, that will require large caramel inventory: we'll be participating in the Windy City Wine Festival in downtown Chicago. We'll be sampling and selling our caramels and need to accumulate enough caramels to sell.
So it's going to be a 5 am wake up for me tomorrow.... Oh well. At least I don't have to put together a long presentation to the upper management for corporate "alignment"