A lesson for engineers

[pwd72s]

A toothpaste factory had a problem: they sometimes shipped empty boxes, without the tube inside.

This was due to the way the production line was set up, and people with experience in designing production
lines will tell you how difficult it is to have everything happen with timing's so precise that every single unit coming
out of it is perfect 100% of the time.

Small variations in the environment (which can't be controlled in a cost-effective fashion) mean you must have quality
assurance checks smartly distributed across the line so that customers all the way down to the supermarket don't get
pissed off and buy another product instead.

Understanding how important that was, the CEO of the toothpaste factory got the top people in the company together
and they decided to start a new project, in which they would hire an external engineering company to solve their empty
boxes problem, as their engineering department was already too stretched to take on any extra effort.

The project followed the usual process: budget and project sponsor allocated, RFP, third-parties selected, and six months
(and $8 million) later they had a fantastic solution on time, on budget, high quality and everyone in the project had a great time.
They solved the problem by using high-tech precision scales that would sound a bell and flash lights whenever a toothpaste
box would weigh less than it should. The line would stop, and someone had to walk over and yank the defective box out of it,
pressing another button when done to re-start the line.

A while later, the CEO decides to have a look at the ROI of the project: amazing results!
No empty boxes ever shipped out of the factory after the scales were put in place.
Very few customer complaints, and they were gaining market share.

That's some money well spent! he says, before looking closely at the other statistics in the report.

It turns out, the number of defects picked up by the scales was 0 after three weeks of production use.
It should've been picking up at least a dozen a day, so maybe there was something wrong with the report.
He filed a bug against it, and after some investigation, the engineers come back saying the report was actually correct.
The scales really weren't picking up any defects, because all boxes that got to that point in the conveyor belt were good.

Puzzled, the CEO travels down to the factory, and walks up to the part of the line where the precision scales were installed.

A few feet before the scale, there was a $20 desk fan, blowing the empty boxes off of the belt and into a bin.

Oh, that, says one of the workers, one of the guys put it there because he was tired of walking over every time the bell rang.

[vangndy]

This is great!

[stomachmonkey]

LOL, I'm a firm believer that necessity is not the mother of invention, laziness is.

[BReif61]

That's the stuff they didn't teach us in school, but was learned within the first month of working on the job.

Just because someone is "blue collar" doesn't mean they can't think; often times they see the obvious solution that is skipped for over-thinking.

[vash]

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

lol, i'm a firm believer that necessity is not the mother of invention, laziness is.

lol!!

[Scott Douglas]

'the CEO of the toothpaste factory got the top people in the company together'

Here's where the CEO blew it, IMHO. The 'top people' usually don't have a clue how it works down on the production floor.

Good story.

[Scott R]

The real lesson is for the CEO, he hired the wrong engineers.

[Bill Douglas]

My last job was with a toothpaste factory, Unilever, and a bit of that sort of stuff went on there too.

[aigel]

That's quite the fairy tale.

[DARISC]

One of my profs back in college worked part time when he was in school for a company that made precision parts for the aerospace industry. One big important job posed a problem: a large dia. hole bored (in aluminum) had minute scratches left by the material removed by the tool. Company egineers and metallurgists scratched their heads, tried different lubes/coolant, tool, cutting speeds, all to no avail.

All the while, the machinist had no idea why these engineers, metallurgists, designers, etc. had been dictating trials of different lube. etc, until one day he asked what the problem is. When told, the machinist, irritated, asked, "Why the hell didn't you ask me? That's no problem!" he said, then re-setup his job, turning the workpiece and boring up into it which allowed the AL shavings to drop out of the bore without causing minute scratches.

[island911]

Originally Posted by aigel

That's quite the fairy tale.

+1 ..had my BS-meter pegged at "bells and lights - The line would stop," -- no automation engineer would do that. ...those guys are all about speed. ...and a fan? c'mon... -too slow.

here ya go, the packaging is at 4min's in.



I suppose that it's nothing new -- this need for people with a small thinking-box to feel like their kind regularly bests the engineers, as if it's no big deal. The truth of the matter is, brain power is all over the map. And a guy who could so easily best the experts clearly would become the expert. So, even when you shake that scenario around, odds of winning the lottery are better than the probability of the OP story. --and I've met a lot of mediocre/Rube Goldberg/young engineers.

[wdfifteen]

Cute story, but the BS meter was reading high until the "stopped the line" part, then it pegged.

[vash]

oh..this story was supposed to be real?

no way. nothing stops the assembly line. that would be the kiss of death.

i think the pringles company will blast an out of spec chip with a hit of air to knock it off the line. automation is cool to watch..once.

[oldE]

Of course the story is just that, but there is so much truth in it.

When I was a depot manager, many orders were arriving with picking errors. The picking sheets had been 'modernized' from a number of pre-printed forms to a computer print out, from which the shipper worked in the cold room. Of course, most people were blaming the Shippers, who picked the loads.

There were several factors leading to the errors, ranging from the lighting level in the cold room to the descriptions on the picking slips. The whole thing had been the brain child of the Office Manager, who had never worked in the cold room and had no respect for the people who did.

After making several suggestions, requests and finally complaints, I was told to STFU. The company was still losing hundreds of thousands of dollars annually from the picking errors, but the office manager wasn't hearing any complaints.

Never underestimate the lack of understanding of a person who has never done the job.

Best
Les

[MBAtarga]

Toyota workers are empowered to stop the assembly line when they detect an issue.

[pwd72s]

Of course it's a story. But then I would think everybody here who has turned a wrench has wondered why engineers designed some things like they did...