Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Air Traffic Control Time Certified In Pos 1 (yrs) 25
Communication Breakdown; Confusion; Situational Awareness; Workload
ATC Issue All Types
Human Factors
Due to the ongoing problem with the FMS in some aircraft; we have had to reroute every aircraft going into ORD. Today we are also a one stream operation as opposed to a two stream operation.We were at 7 in trail and the operation was smooth. Our CIC took a call from our TMU (Traffic Management Unit) saying that we suddenly had to go to 25-30 miles in trail. We were allowed to offload some aircraft to SBN APCH at 15 miles in trail. This resulted in a significant amount of work very quickly. We went from an orderly operation to a mess as multiple sectors trying to get triple to quadruple our standard amount of space prior the C90 boundary.After we turned all of the aircraft away from the airport; our CIC talked to C90 and discovered that they had no idea what we were doing. They did not need all of that space. It took quite a while to recover from someone's (at our TMU) decision to tell us to get that much space. Furthermore; I do not think that they slowed ZID or ZOB or required more space from them during this event.The high altitude controller (FWA); that was feeding me; was called by ZOB asking about holding. They had been contacted by our TMU warning of an impending hold. At this point; we had not even been informed yet about the additional space requirement by our TMU so the FWA controller had no idea what ZOB was talking about.This was a shocking lack of coordination between ZAU's TMU; C90's TMU and the controllers. One should not increase the workload dramatically at multiple sectors and slow and vector multiple planes without a solid reason. This cost the airlines money and time. It also resulted in training being stopped in my area to get the needed manual controllers in place. Not to mention the added stress on an already busy sector.After this incident was over; we were told by our TMU that we were supposed to be 7 in trail to C90 the whole time. The 25-30 mile restriction was for any aircraft we routed through SBN approach. We do not route aircraft through SBN on a regular basis. It is only done when directed by TMU and usually due to weather. I would not have had any reason to do that without being told to; in this case. This entire incident was due to the order from TMU and greatly impacted operations into ORD.
ZAU Controller reported a lack of communication which led to flow control concerns affecting a couple facilities.