The Last Word

Eight board revisions, a vanished supplier and a combative purchasing manager turn a routine test fixture project into a costly lesson in accountability.

Herewith a case study in mistimed malediction. Last year I visited a literary exhibit in New York City with three family members. While minding our own business, enjoying the exhibit, we had an unplanned, non-literary encounter. Two of my family members, who had not seen each other in a year, were chatting, while my other family member and I were absorbed in the exhibit. Suddenly, another visitor to the exhibit started admonishing the two conversationalists for, in his opinion, speaking too loudly. Evidently, their chatter provoked involuntary dyspepsia in the listener, something he did not pay for with his admission ticket. His own concept of injustice provoked rage, and he asserted his rights as he defined them. He complained, loudly, directly, and bitterly, that he did not come to the exhibit to have his thoughts drowned out by idle chatter.

Heavens. When my relatives both begged to differ with his opinion (the term “freedom of speech” was used effusively) – politely telling him, in effect, to get lost – he responded by saying, with remarkable discernment, “Typical liberals.” By this point all four of us had abandoned hope of tranquil museum-going and were bracing for battle.

The incongruity of the situation briefly muted my relatives. You don’t expect this sort of engagement in a portrait gallery. Maybe New Yorkers are overly sensitive (I’ve heard rumors). Regardless, we regrouped, girded our loins, and focused our indignation on our antagonist, who vanished when we complained to museum security. I walked away from the incident thinking of a dozen witty comebacks; those perfect putdowns you remember in the shower, under controlled laboratory conditions, the next day, when the crisis has long passed. Add regret about timing, that I wasn’t able to respond with impact in the moment.

I was, I confess, frozen in an instant by the abrupt nature of the encounter (Memo to self: reaction times need work). My cousin, by delightful contrast, had no such hesitation. She let him have it, in anatomically explicit, obliterating single-syllable terms, doubtless prompting the “liberals” epithet.

Replaying these episodes risks becoming an obsession. “If only I said this,” or “I wish I’d responded that way.” Just like it was drawn up. Retaliation is in. We have role models.

One year later.

I’ve extricated myself from a video meeting with an OEM purchasing manager who graced the proceedings like a malignant toad. The kind that poisons whatever it contacts. The man exuded the discreet charm of a Stalinist prosecutor during 1930s show trials. We were convicted before the trial began. Only sentencing remained. All this before a word was spoken (if looks could kill). Stereotypes are such great time-savers.

My family believed in having the last word. More than an aspirational goal, it was blood sport. My mother was the oldest of eight siblings. Her mother, my grandmother, overtly and by insinuation, manipulated her brood to compete against one another in every endeavor in life. School. Sports. Extracurricular activities. Relationships. Vacations. Marriages. Neighborhoods. Professions. Possessions. It was made plain they were to play to win, to toughen themselves against the world and especially against each other. Being compliant Irish Catholics, they did and accepted the hard knocks as character-building.

To this day, the siblings can barely endure being in the presence of each other. Funerals and other appeals to maturity aren’t enough to bring them together. On those extremely rare occasions when obligation trumped contempt, my aunts and uncles would engage in parlor games of one-upmanship. Naturally, this only reinforced mutual antipathy. Siblings died alone and to the relief of other rival siblings. So, they rarely met. When they did, it wasn’t pretty. Leaving the scene having uttered the last word was a winning hand. They kept score. For decades.

So much for warm family history. Back to the Toad and summary judgment. Our heinous crime?

Raising prices.

We are trying to build an in-circuit test (ICT) fixture and program for this company. The operative verb is “trying.” When we first quoted the project, in December 2025, the board revision was A. It went to C in March, then to F in May. We received an order in June and started pre-production fixture design engineering. Within a week of receiving our PO, we placed a PO with our fixture fabricator, our subcontract machine shop that actually bends metal, wraps wires, and inserts test probes, to our specifications. Four days after our order placement, the OEM’s contract manufacturer (our direct customer) put the job on hold, saying that design errors had been found, and the OEM was spinning the revision again.

That was June. In late September, we received fully validated, new-revision files. Revision H.

As responsible test engineers, our job is to review the changes, advise the customer (often two customers, both the contract manufacturer and their OEM) of the cost ramifications, up or down, and revise our pricing accordingly. Customers frequently make this evaluation unnecessarily hard, failing to document their changes in official ECOs; it falls to us to do their job for them and be detectives, performing side-by-side forensic analysis of old versus new data files, noting the differences, adding and subtracting test probes, and rewiring the fixture accordingly. Naturally, this takes time, time that is billed to the customer. With eight revision changes in nine months (some of which were not shared with us, the test engineers, during the interim stages of design, thereby adding discovery and comparison time), there is much to be discovered, reviewed, and re-engineered. All billable hours. Time remains money.

In addition to eight revision changes, this project was graced with an Act of God: a key parts supplier closed its doors. This board design required the addition of LED probes to the test fixture, to measure color and intensity. The customary LED sensor supplier, rudely, went out of business during the time between being placed on hold in June and the release of new (“definitive”) files in late September. A new, and more expensive, LED sensor was now the only available alternative to meet requirements.

The combination of fixture wiring and probe changes dictated by the latest board revision, as well as the switch to a new LED sensor supplier, meant a significant price increase. We revised our quote and sent it to the contract manufacturer, who forwarded it to the OEM, landing on the desk of the purchasing manager (the amphibian-like person). The purchasing manager, doing his job, sent questions back through the contract manufacturer, asking that we explain and justify the extra costs. This we did, in detail, repeatedly, in multiple emails. However, the detail was not sufficiently persuasive to the Amphibian. He called a Teams meeting for Monday morning, early. Just a friendly chat.

We logged into an ambush. The proceedings began with a rant. You know things are going south when the purchasing manager, unsmiling, prefaces the discussion by saying, “I can’t believe you want to charge several thousand dollars for additional engineering. These are simple changes. They can be done very quickly, and in far less than the eight hours you’re proposing to charge us. Furthermore, the fact that your LED sensor supplier went belly-up doesn’t preclude you from finding the same sensors on the grey market. And finally, you should not have started work on this project in June, knowing that additional changes were coming.” Thus read the three counts in our Bill of Indictment, cleaned up linguistically for tender ears. Nice to meet you too.

But it’s one year later. I’m older. My cantankerous chromosome is taking charge. My I-Don’t-Care chromosome is riding shotgun. No more Mr. Nice Guy. Coloring between the lines is for losers. Intimidation wins, especially when it’s a cover for ignorance. It also runs the risk of provoking an equal and opposite reaction.

Too bad, Toad. Just your luck that age and frustration and DNA combine in one moment, and that moment is now. Enough with reasoning and propriety. I blast.

“Excuse me? How much time do you think it takes to compare eight revisions? What we are charging you incrementally is less than what you should be charged. Somebody has to review these changes and determine what they mean, and what they’ll add to cost. The LED sensor maker’s closure was beyond our control, and there isn’t any grey market for these sensors as their applications are semi-custom and, therefore, built to order.

“Finally, to your point that we should have anticipated further changes and not commenced fixture fabrication, two responses: 1) We are test engineers, not clairvoyants; and 2) we start and stop based on instructions from our customer, your supplier, the contract manufacturer. We did as we were told. You made the changes, not us. If you think those changes don’t carry a cost with them, you’re living in a universe of your own making.”

Extended silence followed. On his side, a comeuppance. On our side, therapeutic relief.

The Toad had a companion lurking with him in his office during the call, providing “technical support.” That companion was the board designer—Mr. A through H—who guiltily admitted, tensely, to the purchasing manager that he should have done a better job of keeping him informed of the nine-month parade of board changes. The designer’s voice tightened to a fly-like whisper as the call progressed. Amphibians eat flies.

Better job indeed. Two days later, we got the revised PO, with all requested cost increases included.

And that, my friends, is the last word.End of article content 

Robert Boguski is president of Datest Corp. (datest.com); rboguski@datest.com. His column runs bimonthly.