One of the most important decisions a leader will ever make is to outsource Production of their products to a third party contract manufacturing organization (CMO).  In most cases, making this decision is a win-win in terms of efficiencies, focus, and the quality of the products being delivered to customers.  But as we all know, nothing in business is as easy as it seems.  I recently had the chance to sit down and interview a group of Sales Professionals in a business-to-business company that recently shifted all their manufacturing to a CMO.  They shared that despite the promises of everyone involved, there were a couple of issues that occurred, the most serious being a missed delivery because the CMO ran out of a key chemical for cleaning their equipment after a batch run.  Although the delay was only a day, it left the sales team scrambling and delivering bad news in a time when competition is breathing down their necks with low prices and guaranteed on-time delivery.