If nothing else, that million dollar engineering solution did give the line worker the motivation to implement the fan solution. Without the line stopping every time an empty box went through, the line worker just didn't care enough to fix the problem.

This sounds more like a management failure more than anything else. The management went immediately to the engineers to solve the problem (and being outside contractors, they solved the problem they were given) and didn't ask the line workers if they had any thoughts on the matter.

Plus, why did management accept the engineering solution that would stop the production line? They went to all the trouble to detect the empty boxes, but then thought it was ok to require manual intervention and a line stoppage to fix it. Surely the machine could have had a part added on to remove the empty box automatically once it was detected.

 

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for every clever solution that a line worker comes up with there are at least 10 that cause injury or a stoppage

 

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This.


The engineers I've had to deal with generally over think a solution. While I appreciate the effort, there's a saying I've heard over the years that I fine to be totally true and on point....


"perfection is the enemy of good enough"

 

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The fan solution wouldnt work on boxes that are only missing one toothpaste tube. It only works on empty boxes.

So the engineers still came up with the best solution.

That sounds like something that happened recently where I work.

They spent thousands installing a new sensor system that would switch diverters on and off automatically on the slide.

If the sensor in front of a diverter was clear it would send packages down that part of the slide until it was covered then it would open and let the flow go down to the next one.

This made life a lot easier for the morning sort which has 5-6 people working on a slide, but it made our job a lot harder on day sort because we only have 2 people there and only need one diverter open.

The system has no way to just open one diverter, so we took stickers off the packages and covered the eyes of the diverters we wanted to stay closed.

The corporate team that came to check out the new system was not amused.