Red Flag
Categories: Metrics
Uh-oh, Houston. We have a problem. You produced 326 electric cars that worked just fine. You wanted to compete with the folks at Tesla. Oh, that Elon. He's so smug. So you got 326 out the door, but after only 100 miles, half of them caught on fire. And not the good s'mores-roasting kind. More like the bad-smelling engine battery kind.
So...you'd think this snafu would have caused a red flag to be raised, such that all production was halted and the problem would be...fixed.
A red flag is a show-stopper, an all-hands-and-hooks-on-deck problem, such that the company cannot continue without fixing it. (A yellow flag is a kinder, gentler, softer version, like Charmin.) Red flags happen all the time in production lines and in business and in life. It's just a question of how people deal with them. Or...don't. See: Reduction in Force for the latter.
