A plant manager consolidates all MRO purchasing onto one national distributor's punch-out catalog. It's a sensible move on paper — one login, one invoice cycle, volume pricing, a vendor-managed crib stocked with the fast-moving items. For eighteen months it works exactly as intended. Then a specific imported bearing fails on a critical gearbox, the distributor's system shows it as available, and it takes three days for anyone to discover that "available" meant available throu
