Chapter 8

On Wednesday morning two things were delivered to The Firm. One was a printout of a picture e-card, sent from her hotel on Ibiza, from Denise to "All at The Firm". Denise had written, "Having a great time, nightlife is wonderful!" and signed it with a kiss. Elaine pinned it up on the notice board, as was usual for holiday postcards. Stan noticed it as he went for a coffee that morning.

He read the card and smiled, thinking, 'So much for spending the nights in bed!' He just hoped Denise was being careful.

The other delivery was the first preproduction samples of Anne's chip. These had been assembled quickly and flown to the UK. Anne and her team leapt on them.

The delivery paperwork for the samples came to Harry's desk as the Materials man. He called to Stan from across the office, "Just one day early. Still, it's better than late!"

Stan agreed, but asked if he could see the paperwork that Shucor had sent. Stan said, "Help yourself," and got back to his PC.

Grabbing the paperwork, Stan went back to his desk and began running through it. He was still uneasy, feeling that there was something 'not right' about it all.

Later that afternoon, he went to see Anne in the lab, and asked how things were going. "Fine," she answered, "We can already tell it's fundamentally sound." Still, he had that 'something's wrong' feeling.

The next day, the fertilizer hit the impellor blade. Anne came storming in to see Stan.

"There's something wrong. Shucor has made an error. Can we check their data?"

Stan quickly put aside his current, rather routine, work and made a space available on his desk. Anne strode purposefully over and sat next to him.

"I thought the chip worked?" he asked.

"It does. Well, it does, but not quite to the design specification. That means it won't work for our customers, which means we'll have to re-spin it. Which means we'll miss the delivery date in any case. We've got to find what Shucor did, so we can prove their liability!"

Anne was nothing if not completely convinced that it wasn't, and couldn't have been, her fault. Stan, for his part, was not pleased at all that even though his instinct had been right he hadn't been able to track anything down.

So, Stan asked a few questions about the nature of the fault. It was what was known as a parametric error — it all worked fine, but something was in the wrong range. In this case, where the device should have been sending a signal on a particular frequency, it actually sent it out on something else.

"It'll be easy enough to fix, but I want to know what's caused it. We ran check after check on that silicon, I'm sure we didn't miss anything.

Stan said that he'd recheck everything from his end as well, but he was sure that Shucor had fabricated that silicon exactly the same way as usual.

That evening the lights were burning late at The Firm. It was a small fault, but it could cost them thousands and harm their reputation. Anne and her team were trying to do two things at once: to fix the design and to find out what exactly had gone wrong with it.

It was almost midnight when Stan, eyes red and puffy, drained yet another cup of coffee. He'd been in touch with Shucor's representative in the UK to ask if there were any unusual circumstances or problems with the chip when it was made, and he'd been instantly assured that no, there was nothing, but they'd check anyway.

"Standard response!" Stan had told Bob, Anne and Percy.

"They never, ever admit to a fault, do they?" said Percy.

"Well, they may not admit it, but they've made an error somewhere!" asserted Anne. They went back to their investigation. Bob and Percy had left about eleven, leaving Anne's hard-pressed team in the lab and Stan alone at his desk in the fluorescent light.

"These are preproduction samples," he told himself. "They are made on the same production facilities as normal parts, but they go to the head of the queue. Otherwise they should be identical to normal full-production units.

"Ok, let's compare the process flow of these versus the process flow of one of our other parts made there."

He found a suitable set of papers, cleared space on his desk for what seemed like the hundredth time, and laid them out side-by-side.

'It all looks okay to me, still... ' he thought.

"Wait. They've used a different bonder."

The connections between the silicon chip itself and the outside world were made using gold wire, very thin gold wire. A 'bonder' was a machine that, effectively, "stitched" the wire in the right place, from the edge of the silicon chip itself to the connection on the legs of the part.

Shucor had met a roadblock. The bonder that was normally used for this had a different machine number to the one used on Anne's parts. Well, probably nothing. Stan decided to look closer.

They'd used thinner bond wire!

Still probably nothing, he told himself. Had it been thicker it would be likely to cause trouble, but thinner... well, he'd better tell Anne anyway.

He got up and walked over into the lab.

Anne's team looked very stressed indeed. He took a look at Anne's face and reversed, walking instead to the coffee machine. He poured a cup, black, added extra sugar and took it to her.

"Thanks, Stan," she said a little absently. Anne looked tired out and not a little frayed around the edges. She made a face at the old, scorched coffee, but sipped it gratefully anyway.

"I noticed something," began Stan, "They've used thinner bond wire. Does that help?"

Anne looked at him blankly for a moment. She felt exhausted. Then she looked intently at Stan again.

"How much thinner?" she asked.

"Twenty percent," replied Stan. "It's a low power device, but I wondered whether the thinner wire might have an effect due to its higher impedance."

The two discussed the finding for a while, with Anne growing increasingly animated. Finally she grabbed Stan's hand and dragged him over to her computer.

"Do you know, we've had a collective intellectual failure in here. We've been considering what had gone wrong with the chip, not with the whole package. I think you've found it!" Now she was getting excited.

She called her team together and gave rapid, terse instructions. "It should be easy enough to test now that we know what to look for. Let's go!"

Stan stayed around in the lab, fetching coffee and water and generally trying to be supportive. Finally, around half past one in the morning, Anne gathered her tired troops together for a final discussion before going home. They talked quietly, and then Anne sent them home, saying, "Thanks everyone. We're all tired, there's no more to be done tonight in any case. I think we now know what's happened; we can prove it to our satisfaction tomorrow and get in touch with Shucor. Go home. Shoo!"

She approached Stan and said, tiredly, "You found it. Congratulations. Now help me to my car before I fall over!"

On the way to her car in the darkened car park, Stan said, "I thought you young things had more stamina. It's not even two o'clock yet."

She punched his arm tiredly. "You try concentrating for that long. I ought to have taken a break earlier, but I was so frustrated."

They came to Anne's sports car car, an electric-blue Mazda MX-5.

"Are you okay to drive?" he asked the beautiful, but exhausted, designer.

"I might have to crawl into my bed, but I'll be fine. I'll see you tomorrow, Stan. Well... later today I guess. Good night."

Friday morning, well, later Friday morning, Stan was woken by his alarm. He groaned, hauled his weary self out of bed and shuffled through his morning routine.

"Christ, it was easier getting out of bed when I was in my twenties," he complained. There was no reply.

Still, Stan felt pretty pleased with himself. Now that Anne's team knew what had happened and that it wasn't their fault, their morale would be sky-high this morning. Perhaps the preproduction samples were no good, but even then they'd be able to get a lot of the work done.

The main production lot was due in a couple of weeks. So the delay, while serious, wouldn't be fatal, even if the samples they had were not good enough to provide as 'alpha' test devices to certain important customers. Actually, Stan had a feeling that they'd be fine for the purpose, especially if said customers were kept properly informed.

Stan's arrival at work was greeted by a call of "Well done!" from Bob. The Managing Director, who was away on a business trip, would be checking in later by phone to check up on progress, and there was already a pile of emails making inquiries, demanding reports and so on. Having an answer made fending him off much easier for Bob!

Stan and Bob made a good team themselves, and with Elizabeth dealing with routine matters the two men fell into their normal dovetailed roles. Bob was much better at dealing with people than Stan was, so while Stan was completing his report on Anne's chip Bob was arranging a video-conference with Shucor. Stan would feed information to Bob while the negotiations went on.

At lunchtime Anne found Stan, and thanked him once again. She looked tired but happy, and told him that calculation and simulation showed that the actual production devices would be "just about spot on!"

Around three o'clock, Stan received an email from Percy. It invited him to a 'success' party that Anne and her team were having that evening. Percy told him that it was his insight that led to them being able to declare the chip a success, saving them thousands of pounds and weeks of time, and he was pleased to invite Stan along with the team.

Stan phoned Percy.

"Thanks for the invite," said Stan.

"You're welcome," Percy replied. "Oh, I forgot to say, we'll be going to Apricots so you'll need to wear a jacket and tie. I hope that's all right?

"Going all-out, then? No problem."

"Good," said Percy, continuing "We'll go in the company minibus and my car, picking up here at eight tonight. See you then."

"Goody, I don't have to worry about drinking!" said Stan. He'd get a cab to The Firm tonight.

Stan decided to wear his 'dancing outfit', so he pressed his suit and white shirt, got out a suitable tie and polished those old shoes. To help along with the ironing he put on some music.

He was going to play some Meatloaf, but then realized what listening to those songs would probably do to him, so instead he played Paul Young's excellent No Parlez. It was fun pressing his shirt along to Iron Out The Rough Spots!

After the ironing he showered, shaved and ran a comb through his hair. A glance in the mirror made him smile; there was no way he was going to get the part of the next James Bond! But he decided he was presentable. He felt Caron's agreement, and told her 'You're Biased!' but in truth he felt good, he knew he'd done a good job this week and everyone likes a little recognition for their efforts.

It was half-past seven by the time he was ready. The cab arrived, and took him off to The Firm. He could see the Mercedes Viano minibus and Percy's black BMW 320iES by the main door as the cab pulled up in front of it.

A couple of the engineers were already there along with Percy so he chatted idly with them while waiting. Before long Anne's blue Mazda swept through the front gates and into the car park, coming to a stop scant feet from the minibus.