By mid September , a busy season for Hershey, the company was experiencing serious order processing ad shipping ad shipping problems with the system . large customer load up on Halloween candies in the third quarter of every year. After implementing its new systems, Hershey faced shipment delays and deliveries of incomplete orders.
Typical delivery times increased from 5 days to 12. In third quarter 1999,Hershey sales dropped by more than 12% relative 10 1998 ,while inventory piled up in warehouse.this strained many customer relationships and threatened market share.