When you want to look at something optimised, start with things that are expensive to run. Airports are expensive in nearly every sense of the word, so it's a place where you find things being optimised to hell and back. Outgoing passenger flights may need clean, fresh flatware. The window in time allocated to unload dirty flatwar and load a clean batch is small; that cart of flatware needs to be in exactly the right place at the right time, or there will be delays, which will cost a lot of money to someone.
So, naturally, the strategies on how to get flatware onto airplanes is an area of deep study.
I talked to a friend of a friend at a party about this, since it was their subject of study. They thought they were studying the most boring thing in the world and I couldn't make them understand why it fascinated me.