A toothpaste factory
had a problem: they sometimes shipped empty boxes, without the tube inside.
This was due to the way the production line was set up, and people with
experience in designing production lines will tell you how difficult it is to
have everything happen with timings so precise that every single unit coming out
of it is perfect 100% of the time. Small variations in the environment (which
can’t be controlled in a cost-effective fashion) mean you must have quality
assurance checks smartly distributed across the line so that customers all the
way down to the supermarket don’t get pissed off and buy another product
instead.
Understanding how
important that was, the CEO of the toothpaste factory got the top people in the
company together and they decided to start a new project, in which they would
hire an external engineering company to solve their empty boxes problem, as
their engineering department was already too stretched to take on any extra
effort.
The project followed the
usual process: budget and project sponsor allocated, RFP, third-parties
selected, and six months (and $8
million) later they had a fantastic solution — on time, on budget, high
quality and everyone in the project had a great time. They solved the problem
by using high-tech precision scales that would sound a bell and flash lights
whenever a toothpaste box would weigh less than it should. The line would stop,
and someone had to walk over and yank the defective box out of it, pressing
another button when done to re-start the line.
A while later, the CEO
decides to have a look at the ROI of the project: amazing results! No empty
boxes ever shipped out of the factory after the scales were put in place. Very
few customer complaints, and they were gaining market share. “That’s some money
well spent!” – he says, before looking closely at the other statistics in the
report.
It turns out, the
number of defects picked up by the scales was 0 after three weeks of production
use. It should have been picking up at least a dozen a day, so maybe there was
something wrong with the report. He filed a bug against it, and after some
investigation, the engineers come back saying the report was actually correct.
The scales really weren't picking up any defects, because all boxes that got to
that point in the conveyor belt were good.
Puzzled, the CEO
travels down to the factory, and walks up to the part of the line where the
precision scales were installed.
A few feet before the
scale, there was a $20 desk fan, blowing the empty boxes off of the belt and
into a bin.
“Oh, that,” says one
of the workers — “one of the guys put it there ’cause he was tired of walking
over ….. “ every time the bell rang”.
at it used to be. “We could put together an Intel motherboard with a nice case and a Microsoft operating system and sell it and make good money,” recalls Swank. “That kind of product has become very commoditized.”
