A toothpaste factory had a problem. They sometimes shipped empty boxes without the tube inside. This challenged their perceived quality with the buyers and distributers. Understanding how important the relationship with them was, the CEO of the company assembled his top people. They decided to hire an external engineering consultancy to solve the problem. The project followed the usual process: Budget and project manager allocated, tenders, and third parties selected. Six months and $10 million later they had a fantastic solution, on time, on budget and high quality. Everyone in the project was pleased. They solved the problem by using a high tech precision scale that would sound a bell and flash a light whenever a toothpaste box weighed less than it should. The line would stop, someone would walk over, remove the defective box, and press another button to re-start the line. As a result of the new packaging monitoring process, no empty boxes were being shipped out of the factory. With no more customer complaints, the CEO felt the $10 million was well spent. He received the line statistics report and discovered the number of empty boxes picked up by the scale in the first week was consistent with previous. However the next three weeks were zero. The estimate rate should have been at least a dozen boxes a day. He had the engineers check the equipment, they verified the report, and that the precision scale was functioning correctly. Puzzled, the CEO travelled down to the factory, viewed the line where the precision scale was installed, and observed just ahead of the new $10 million dollar solution sat a $20 desk fan blowing empty toothpaste boxes off the belt and into a bin. He asked the line supervisor what that was about. “Oh, that” the supervisor replied, “Bob, the kid from maintenance, put it there because.... he was tired of walking over, removing the empty box and re-starting the line every time the bell rang....!!!!
Posted on: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 22:32:07 +0000
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