A Toothpaste Factory Had a Problem

Any company spending 30k + on an automatic inline checkweigher is going to have an automatic reject attached to it that would knock the underweight product off the conveyor into a bin. That's typically a $1000 option on the upper end. Much less if you just use a little air jet for the reject.

Or they could spend another 200k on a shiny new cartoner that doesn't kick out empties, but that might be a really expensive fix for an intermittent problem. Sometimes fixing the root problem long term is more expensive than the medium term bandaid.

Applying this parable to a startup -> the first solution was superior because it required no specialized knowledge and got you 80% of the way there. sure line efficiency was 15% lower and you lost a cheap empty boxes but for the most part it was just as good. This goes in the "problems you can solve later" bucket

edit: by first solution I meant the fan... the alarm was just stupid

I almost stopped reading, because I knew the story of the fan, but this version actually goes a bit further (won't spoil).