Progressive In-plant in a Progressive Company

More to the point, as Hulett discovered after collecting data, the CD-ROM supplier was late 30 percent of the time, did not have the flexibility to handle rush orders and had "severe" quality problems at times, including labeling software wrong.

"We were requested by the director of Technical Services to take on the responsibility of managing the CD-ROM manuals...since that [manuals] was our competency," Hulett explains. Since then, the company's software development groups have asked the in-plant to produce software CDs, a more complex process, given the many different software versions. Difficulties aside, it has been working out well, Hulett says.