The Common Reasons

If you read our article about parts pricing (you can find that here) then you'll have a basic understanding of why it is that some things are not as they might seem, and that parts are made in batches. There are exceptions to that, of course, but the vast bulk of parts are batch-produced.

So the common reasons we get are:

• Overlap - a new batch hasn't been made before the stock runs out
• Ordered on request
• Target to be met to trigger enough volume to justify production
• Problem discovered

We will try to dissect each a bit as briefly as we can to offer some understanding.

Overlap

We call this overlap because it's simple and easy to remember, but essentially, what we mean is that the brand or maker didn't order more parts quickly enough.

It's important to stress that this might not be their fault, as parts can be weird; it's not uncommon to get a sudden burst of use of a particular part from time to time, and if that happens, you can get caught short on stock levels because you can't anticipate or plan for things like that. So, you run out of a part and have to wait for it to be restocked.

That happens to the best of us. Sadly, there's no option but to deal with it as best you can.

Where you are waiting on production, that can take a while.

Production of most things is planned out months in advance, material ordered, factory time booked and more so changing a production schedule isn't just as easy as saying, "Lads, we need a few pumps, we're making those today"!

No, it's far, far more complicated than that; it all takes time, costs money.

That's the basic reason that a lot of parts will end up being out of stock, sometimes for months, and there's no option but to wait on production catching up with demand.

Ordered On Request

There are parts that we deal with a number of them that are only ever ordered on request. For many suppliers, this isn't a problem; they don't deal with these types of things as they're too much hassle for them because parts like this that are factory orders, you can't cancel, and you can't return, they are supplied as a custom order.

What you often find is that these are very low-volume parts that are expensive and are dependent on a few components being put together as they are needed. So, they get constructed specifically for the model you need it for, when you need it.

Lead times for these vary wildly, as can pricing on them. More reasons why suppliers may not want to deal with them.

Target To Trigger

This is one we learned about many years ago when Hoover was bought by Candy and that serves as a fantastic, simple example of this phenomenon.

We needed a few motors for Hoover machines so we could repair them and they were out of stock, for ages! Eventually we spoke with a chatty chap high up in the parts side of things who said that, in order to make it worth the while making these motors, they needed to have at least 250 ordered. Because they had to make 500 of them or order some parts to build them and there were minimum order requirements, or no dice, they couldn't get them.

For almost eight months, those motors were out of stock and in limbo. Customers were going nuts at us!

Not helped by the fact that the machines were all a good few years old, many scrapped we expected and the motor was well ove £100 so most were for insurance jobs. The insurers ended up writing many off due to this (and you wonder why premiums are so high!).

The point being that manufacturers will only make parts if it's economically viable to do so and they care little for the problems of a few individuals.

And, if they don't get to the level where thy trigger an order for those parts, they're made obsolete.

A Problem Is Discovered

This is way less common one than any of the above, but it does happen.

If a maker figures out that there is an issue with a particular part or they suspect that there could be one, then they might halt sales of the part until they figure out what to do. The problem with it is that if that does happen, how long it can take to work itself out can vary immensely.

Changes to parts are extremely common; we see that all the time and people are confused by it a lot. We've had people trying to track down an "original" part exactly like the one that failed when it no longer exists. Often, however, itno longer exists for a reason. Like, it wasn't safe!

But these changes can cause delays that are again outside anyone's control.

When We Get Delays

We've only scratched the surface again on this topic here; there's a lot more to this than we've detailed abovebut there are things people should know about delays on parts.

The first is that, due to the nature of the most common reasons, we don't know exactly what a part might become available again; the chances are the people who make it don't either. Well, not exactly at any rate.

Mostly you will get a rough date or idea when a part will become availble but that's about all the info we ever get. We don't get updated, and we certainly don't get a constant feed of information on the status of things.

We do our utmost to provide you with as much information as we do get, as soon as we get it as that is the best we can possibly do for people and, if we suspect that it's a lost cause, we will tell you that.