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You've clearly never worked in a factory as a low level person who is usually asked last, if at all, how to solve a problem concerning their job. I've forwarded this to my father, who will love it as a person who rose from the shop floor to the highest levels of management and never lost his distrust of "college boys."

I don't think your father will like the joke, either. According to the story, the line workers had the ability to fix the problem all along, but they didn't bother until the $8 million system made it personally inconvenient for them when an empty box reached the scales. It makes them sound clever but also rather lazy and selfish.

>the line workers had the ability to fix the problem all along

Yes they had the ability, but did the line workers know that empty boxes being shipped was a problem?

There is no solution without a problem.

They most likely didn't. My father used to be sent around as a trouble shooter and would tell stories of managers never setting foot on the factory floor to talk to the workers.

Are the workers so stupid that they think shipping empty boxes is normal?

Common sense is not always wrong.

Yes, we all know that the line workers are usually:

* given high(er)-level information on how the company is doing

* asked for their opinions

* highly motivated by management to solve problems like that

I highly recommend reading The Gervais Principle.

unfortunately line workers are never asked "what would you do?"

And even if asked "how would you fix the problem"

Answering with "Put a fan right there to blow all the empty boxes off the line" would be seen as taking the piss and laughed off with comments like "You're missing the big picture"

>>the line workers had the ability to fix the problem

But not the authority.

This reminds me of an article about lazy people innovate. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4178031

I think one of the first things the college boys are taught now - or should be - is that one of the first things they should do is talk to the low-level folks on the floor. Even if they don't have the solution, they often have information/experience that can inform the solution or even better, what the real problem is. And this applies not only to factory floors, but to any "system" made up of people and processes (equipment optional).

As an engineering major, I did a few co-op assignments in a factory. I was assigned the task of figuring out how to optimize a particular line in the factory - we had new equipment coming in and were considering retrofitting some of the other equipment. The folks working on the floor told me how much they appreciated that I spoke with them and got their input rather than simply coming down with my "stopwatch and measuring tape."

Now I'm on the other side of the line <sigh>. And I'm sick of management and/or experts trying figure out how to improve morale and processes without consulting those of us in the trenches.

I sure hope you're right. It wasn't drilled into me when I was in engineering school (mid-2000s), but I will heartily confirm that operators are a fantastic resource. Interviewing operators is definitely not optional if you want to succeed. Engineers who just leap in often look foolish and face a lot of resistance getting upgrades implemented (well, ideally at least).

That said, operators tend to be masters of their section, but do not often have a comprehensive high-level view (excepting relief operators, who need to have a good idea of the whole process to cover multiple positions). As a result, I treat their input as a deposition or raw data/evidence: pure, unfiltered signal. Some interpretation is likely needed to make it fit into the overall whole of the process, but it's miles away better than guessing or just trusting assumptions!

Process engineering is a comprehensive and collaborative field. Leave operators out, and you're just not looking at the process. People matter. A lot.

This story is probably part of the "blue collar innovation" legends. For more: http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/innovate.asp

"The legend about a low-level employee who pipes up with a shockingly brilliant yet simple suggestion that either makes or saves his employer untold millions of dollars has long been part of the canon of business legends."

No doubt. But these sorts of things also do happen.

I used a 20 dollar pen cam off eBay for diagnostics once, avoiding tens of thousands in diagnostic downtime needed otherwise and found a root cause of an otherwise undetected massive failure mode. All because the blasted thing fit. (Full disclosure: the idea started with a plant tech who wondered if there was an application for the pens - research and testing later showed it safe under our operating conditions (a small explosion was possible).)

It's a rare opportunity, but magical when it happens (and modern, cheap tech is magical for heavy industry).

Oh sorry, I didn't realise the connotations of "legend". I just wanted to refer to other similar/related stories. Interesting story.

I really wish I didn't default to reading the word "legend" as implausible. I don't use it in spoken conversation that way, at least.

I like another poster's point that even if it's not real, it's still useful as a parable, so your link to more is appreciated!

"tales" might be what you were looking for. They could be either true, embellished, or not true but a great tale.

My MBA had an entire course on the Toyota philosophy.

One of the biggest points put forward was (paraphrased).

> At Toyota we don't automate. Well we do automate, but we wait as long as possible to automate. Why would we build a machine to do a process that we don't understand? The machine won't improve the process, it will keep doing whatever broken thing you tell it.

Basically treat all of your employees as the assets they are, and get them to help improve the process.

A few things:

The box-filling machine was not working properly. This could be due to wear, poor quality boxes, a problem upstream with where the tubes came from.

Although a solution was found to the problem of shipping empty boxes, the process in the factory was not resolved in that the source of the problem was not identified.

The new scales made it possible to find the empty boxes and pause the conveyor belt so that the offending light box could be removed.

However, the operator went ahead and did his own thing with the fan, not asking for authorisation from the site electrician, his line manager, senior management or anyone else. Because of what he did it no longer became possible to have the line stop as soon as a problem was detected. Or to have the scales machine do the accounting for this. This information may be important for the engineering department to know they have to clean/fix/replace parts on the box filling machine.

If it was my factory I might not have sacked the operator for being a 'loose cannon' however I would not have rewarded him for his ingenuity. To be fair he did not know of the empty box problem until the scales came along, he was not 'wilfully ignorant' of the problem because he did not know about it. However, his fix did not solve the core problem and it only made it harder for the engineering team to remedy the situation. (The engineering team were not wilfully ignorant either).

So this is a silly story that might be a funny anecdote at an after dinner talk but it has no relevance to a real factory and the processes involved. If anything it tells a different story of how out of touch we are with manufacturing.

The engineering team could adjust the scales to automatically tip an empty box off the line, recording when it was found. Win (data to identify the source of the problem)- win (line guy doesn't have to walk over) - win (no empty boxes shipped)!

From my experience, the key point in this story is that if you bother people enough with useless manual interventions, they will come up with a way to automate themselves out of the job.

Furthermore, the solution is often simpler and cheaper than the monitoring infrastructure.

And, well, the rest of the anecdote is based on the waste of money caused by the fact that the external company had everything to gain from overengeneering the solution.

You're right: jokes like this only perpetuate bad attitudes- "oh, let's laugh at management/engineering, they think they're so clever."

From my time working in improvement in factories, I'm very confident that the single largest factor that determined whether they would achieve any improvements was the attitude of the team in place. "We've tried it before and it didn't work" is the enemy. Rarely is the enemy "let's spend $8mm on un-necessary consulting help." That's really, really rare. Most people hate spending money on outside help, they see it as a failure (which is also a harmful attitude).

To try balancing the discussion a bit:

On the upside, due to the $8M contract, lots of people were able to work and earn a living. The story also mentions how the team had a great time, and probably lots of useful connections between people were made, and tacit knowledge exchanged. Neither of those is traditionally accounted for by the engineering mindset.

On the upside, due to the $8M contract, lots of people were able to work and earn a living. The story also mentions how the team had a great time, and probably lots of useful connections between people were made, and tacit knowledge exchanged.

This sort of reasoning could also justify the TSA.

> On the upside, due to the $8M contract, lots of people were able to work and earn a living.

Yes but you have to also consider the opportunity cost of that $8M. Were the incidental benefits gained worth the cost?

Your fallacy is: "Glazier's fallacy". See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

A little bit of self-doubt is expected from civilised people.

You're wrong in calling my thinking fallacious, because my point was merely to emphasise how reductionistic approaches never give a complete picture, which is why people from a STEM background often benefit from further training in psychology and social sciences. However, Theodores' reply ('A few things:...') does a better job than mine.

Nevertheless, Glazier's fallacy is tangential, so thank you for posting.

nooo !! that's why research into the hover-skateboard stopped !!

"Most people hate spending money on outside help"

Managers at large companies love hiring consultants. They look like they're being professional, they don't have to figure it out themselves, and they can shift responsibility onto the consultant. The last works if you hire a reputable consultant (ie. expensive) that no one would object to your having hired. So in fact, hiring a specifically expensive consultant would be desireable.

Its like dancing, the more effortless it looks, the harder it is to do. Sometimes takes a lot of math to design the ideal simplest possible part rather than just hacking some kind of brute force beast together.

"Simplicate and add lightness" is a cool aerospace engineering slogan that's been attributed to almost everyone in the biz who is cool, although it actually comes from a Ford engineer named Stout (like the beer), at least as I recall it. I like this slogan, and its the same general topic we're discussing, but I think the joke is more effective because its funny.

> Its like dancing, the more effortless it looks, the harder it is to do.

This is actually not true. It is fairly effortless for the dancers doing it - what was hard was all the training and hard work getting to the point of it being effortless.

> is it because we forget that simplicity is better?

Oh yes, all the time. I am busy trying to automate everything in the office, because it is what I know. Whenever someone comes to me with a problem, I think about how it will integrated into our systems, adding tables to the database, adding a page so people can track how it is done. When someone else has already solved it using a simple trick.

I definitely feel we have not read the same text. It is clear to me that a problem that can be addressed by a 8M$ or by a 20$ solution, the 8M$ can be ruled as 'over-engineered' and very inefficient in this particular context. I don't see how this inefficiency is promoted by such a story?

But the eight million dollar project is more efficient than waiting for a random twenty dollar fix. And as it seemed to be meeting the goals set for it, it was also likely more efficient than allowing bad product out the door, which is what this is really gauged against.

Honestly, I was expecting the punch line to be that they found it cost more in the end because it shut the blasted line down for each bad box. I'm an engineer in a plant, and frankly that just seems insane, even if localized (accumulators are never big enough!)

I think it might have been more efficient to hold a company meeting that said, "Hey guys, we are having a problem with empty boxes getting shipped. If you have an idea of how to make sure empty boxes get removed from the line, let us know!" Note that the simplest and most cost effective solution will be used, and offer a thousand dollar bonus to whoever suggests it. (The bonus might motivate people who otherwise might not care.)

That is orders of magnitude more efficient than commissioning an $8M consultation, and is likely to find any low-hanging fruit such as fans-on-conveyor belts. If no one has any ideas in the first month, it's possible that such insights are not commonplace, and then you can go commission your million dollar consultation.

I'm going to pretend that you didn't suggest holding a plant-wide meeting as a form of efficiency ;)

But the idea of setting up bounties is controversial. The arguments for and against it quickly get remarkably tortuous. I've never seen it implemented, but I can definitely say the idea is attractive. I had a coworker who would offer a hundred bucks (of his own money) to the operators who maintained stable production on a weekend run; it looks like it works, but he couldn't afford that too much.

It's often easier to spend giant sums of cash than to be clever, as cleverness is unreliable, but giant stacks of cash are accountable. (TL;DR: industry is often penny wise, pound foolish.)

I wouldn't call a solution gathered without consulting everyone's feedback 'efficient'. Obviously the 'fan solution' might have come up earlier (or at least some derivative)

I think it's some of each ... and serves the same purpose that reading Dilbert cartoons do. When you read one that sounds a bit like you, do you pause and wonder whether something needs to change?