I read an article in yesterday's Cleveland Plain Dealer about a small metal stamping firm hereabouts and the steps it was taking to deal with this recession.

(The story can be found here.)

If you read the story, you'll come to this:

The tiny metal switch covers his plant was making for customers weren't going into MRI machines in hospitals. Fist-sized metal brackets weren't going into garage-door openers in his neighbors' houses. They were sitting in warehouses.

"[Our customers] were blindly thinking that this was just a dip," Reid said.

When his customers realized that they had built up months, even years, of parts in inventory, they canceled future orders.

Now, for me, this is a real "WTF?" moment. What on earth would cause these customers to order YEARS worth of a part before they were needed? My own view is that the only thing that could cause such a thing is rank, abject stupidity on the part of the managers of said customers.

Is there another explanation? Is there something I'm missing or a market dynamic of which I'm ignorant under which the scenario of having YEARS of inventory make sense? Or, am I right....that the company was selling to dumbasses who didn't know their own business?