In 2008 I was assigned to a major IT manufacturer that suffered a million $$ supply chain failure. Their resident 25-year-old genius laid out an SAP upgrade as a solution and my company won a sub-contract.
![](https://broward.ghost.io/content/images/2022/02/AEP9.jpg)
I wandered around and found a senior architect who blamed the failure on the recent removal of XML enforcement so I investigated further. Large daily uploads with proprietary formats were fed into a huge switch (10,000 "IF..THEN" clauses) which parsed out signals to trigger sub-orders.
![](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/broward/images/master/Architecture/cisco/Cisco1.jpg)
![](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/broward/images/master/Architecture/cisco/Cisco2.gif)
We wrote up a presentation (partly shown here) which implied the SAP upgrade was pointless and the proper fix is an enforced interface for suppliers to send timing signals, which removes the risk of a parser failure by a rogue supplier.
![](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/broward/images/master/Architecture/cisco/Cisco3.jpg)
The project manager disliked our slide show and the genius wanted me gone so I happily agreed to leave. I was pretty sure this was an impending train-wreck.
The manager had grimaced at my eagerness to quit and called me the following week but I'd already left. The senior architect told me a month later that the project was suspended and "under review". He quit a few weeks later.
![](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/broward/images/master/schemer.png)
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