Keep it Simple

The importance of keeping it simple from a case study of one of Japan’s biggest cosmetic companies:

Management was investigating a complaint that a consumer had bought a soap box that was empty. Management isolated the problem to the assembly line. Somehow one soap box went through the assembly line empty. Management asked engineers to solve the problem.

At a huge cost, the engineers devised an X-ray machine with high-resolution monitors, manned by two people, to watch all the soap boxes passing through the line to make sure they were not empty.

But a long serving and lowly ranked‘practical’employee devised a much simpler solution. He pointed an industrial electric fan at the assembly line. As the soap boxes passed the fan it blew the empty boxes out of the line!