[BITList] Fwd: [vsdh] THINKING SIMPLE

[Michael Feltham]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Sanjoy Gupta
Date: 21 July 2009 07:33:24 BST
Subject: [vsdh] THINKING SIMPLE

Case 1

When NASA began the launch of astronauts into space, they found out  
that the pens wouldn't work at zero gravity (ink won't flow down to  
the writing surface). To solve this problem, it took them one decade  
and $12 million. They developed a pen that worked at zero gravity,  
upside down,underwater, in practically any surface including crystal  
and in a temperature range from below freezing to over 300 degrees C.  
And what did the Russians do...?? They used a pencil.

Case2

One of the most memorable case studies on Japanese management was the  
case of the empty soapbox, which happened in one of Japan's biggest  
cosmetics companies. The company received a complaint that a consumer  
had bought a soapbox that was empty. Immediately the authorities  
isolated the problem to the assembly line, which transported all the  
packaged boxes of soap to the delivery department. For some reason, one
soapbox went through the assembly line empty. Management asked its  
engineers to solve the problem. Post-haste, the engineers worked hard  
to devise an X-ray machine with high-resolution monitors manned by two  
people to watch all the soapboxes that passed through the line to make  
sure they
were not empty. No doubt, they worked hard and they worked fast but  
they spent a whooping amount to do so. But when a rank-and-file  
employee in a small company was posed with the same problem, he did  
not get into complications of X-rays, etc., but instead came out with  
another solution. He bought a strong
industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line.. He  
switched the fan on, and as each soapbox passed the fan, it simply  
blew the empty boxes out of the line.




-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.bcn.mythic-beasts.com/pipermail/bitlist/attachments/20090721/abe6b88f/attachment.shtml