Horse Creek Lemonade

Horse Creek Chemical Company is struggling to remain solvent after a former president nearly bankrupted the company. He ignored all advice and continued to expand the company into areas where it was not needed. This resulted in an oversupply in the market place and the bottom fell out of prices. The lower prices were less than the cost to produce the products and the company was losing millions. As a result they had the first ever in the history of the company layoffs and cutbacks. When he was forced to resign, Sean Harris was brought in as the new CEO to clean up the mess. He had a reputation as a no nonsense administrator and could be heavy handed when he needed to be. His bringing in minorities to help reduce labor costs caused a lot of hard feelings and brought out prejudices that some folks didn’t even know they had. Soon after that rumors were rampant about drugs and terrorist cells at Horse Creek. While Sean was busy shutting down and selling off plants that were no longer needed Charles Goins a company VP was busy trying to shore up moral and upgrade some of Horse Creek’s decaying infrastructure. When two new construction contracts were given to Mexican companies Horse Creek became a powder keg just waiting for someone to light the fuse Horse Creek’s research and development group was about the only good news they had. When it was announced that a biofuel that would free Horse Creek from dependence on foreign oil had been discovered there was reason to be optimistic and the future looked bright. Then an explosion and fire in the research pilot plant dashed those hopes. Because of all the rumors everyone blamed the accident on sabotage. They had planned on making eight pilot plant runs of what had been named CZ2010 to both collect data for a plant size scale up and to build up a working inventory of the biofuel. They were in the middle of the fifth run when the explosion and fire destroyed not only all their records and equipment, but the computer models and programs as well as part of their inventory. Frank Hoover the director of R & D was one of the most feared men at Horse Creek. Very few liked him, and almost no one trusted him. However, he probably was their most competent chemist and everyone in management thought he was one of their most loyal employees. While the rest of the plant was struggling during those lean years Frank saw to it that R & D was not affected by any of the layoffs. In fact, Frank had managed to add several jobs during that time. When the cutbacks came Frank saw to it that it was from top to bottom. His and all other managers salaries were cut right along with all the others. He also was the loudest voice against all the minorities. None of them worked in his R & D and he intended to keep it that way. He had butted heads several times with Sean over this issue. After the fire he was like a mad man trying to get the plant put back together and had vowed that heads would roll over all the records being lost. Only one man knew that the records were not as lost as everyone thought they were. He had them stored on his computer’s hard drive but wasn’t about to let Frank know that, not yet anyway. John Wilder had come to work for Horse Creek as a chemist and through some political maneuvering and apple polishing had worked his way into Frank’s confidence. He had become Frank’s trouble shooter. Over Frank’s objection Southeast Industrial Accident Investigators had been retained to investigate the fire and explosion. Frank didn’t see the need to have an outside firm doing the investigation and did everything in his power to keep them out. Because of Frank’s reputation this had caused some to question whether or not Frank might have had something to do with the fire. Southeast had sent Bill Arnold to do the initial evaluation. Bill had spent almost three weeks gathering information and testing theories about the fire. He had written his initial report, but had agreed to give a verbal presentation to several members of lower management who would not be getting the written copy. Bill’s initial investigation had raised almost as many questions as it did answers and he had agreed to stay on until those questions were resolved. He had gone out of his way to avoid any contact with Frank during his investigation and thought that he may have gotten away with it until he saw Frank walk into his presentation.