| Yep, sounds like Rays theory is right.
Nobody, from supermarkets and retailers to manufacturers, have huge amounts of parts in stock now. Everybody uses the Just-in-time supply chain approach.
Forks cost money to buy from whatever supplier, so unless Ducati can sell the forks on quickly (and that naturally means nailing them onto a bike) they're just another inventory overhead which ties up money.
So it could be simply that the Showa lorry got stuck in traffic and didn't arrive that day. How many bikes would Ducati make in a day? They wouldn't be paid for these bikes until they were delivered, so they would be loathe to lose a days production if they had a stack of Ohlins lying about, cos they would lose far more money by halting production than paying the additional cost of the Ohlins |