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Reminds me of this story: http://www.lixo.org/archives/2008/07/21/networks-are-smart-at-the-edges/ http://www.lixo.org/archives/2008/07/21/networks-are-smart-a

by F_J_H 15y ago

Reminds me of this story: http://www.lixo.org/archives/2008/07/21/networks-are-smart-at-the-edges/ http://www.lixo.org/archives/2008/07/21/networks-are-smart-a... 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 the supermarket don’t get pissed off and buy someone else’s 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 some high-tech precision scales that would sound a bell and flash lights whenever a toothpaste box weighing 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. 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’ve 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 it, there was a $20 desk fan, blowing the empty boxes out of the belt and into a bin. “Oh, that — one of the guys put it there ’cause he was tired of walking over every time the bell rang”, says one of the workers.

chopsueyar 15y ago
Awesome. $8 million versus $20.
zwieback 15y ago
If you think the moral of the story is that $8M were wasted due to bad management or whatever you'd be wrong. The scales were a success because they enabled the desk fan solution. Manufacturing line operators are very clever but they don't necessarily have the right incentive. The loss to the company wasn't visible but the horns and flashing lights were. I used to build inspection systems for manufacturing lines and we'd frequently build expensive (not $8M, though) vision systems, E-Testers, etc. just to uninstall them a year or two later when the process or automation guys had found a way to prevent problems from happening in the first place.
- billswift 15y ago
  If not "bad management", what would you call that kind of mismatch of incentives?
  - zwieback 15y ago
    Ok, good point. A better way to incent is to offer bounties for yield improvements. Most manufacturing outfits I've seen have those but they are probably too low. Here's another problem mentioned in the article, in fact it's maybe the real problem: the engineers "who were already stretched too thin" probably didn't talk to their operators and technicians often enough. When I was a manufacturing engineer I noticed how much I learned about the stuff I was building by simply hanging around the operators for significant amounts of time. Not only did I get a lot of information about the subtle ways my systems were failing, I also learned that the operators generally felt engineering was ignoring their concerns. Just listening and trying to make the operators' life better earned me so much cooperation from the floor I later had no problems getting them to try out new things for me and providing me feedback on "improvements".
- 6ren 15y ago
  Not just incentives, but also cognition - when you change the presentation of the problem, you change the way people think about it. I think this is the reason to build prototypes that you can play with - you really will see things differently. And (hold the hate) obviousness in patent law takes this into account, by evaluating it with respect to the publicly known state of the art - but if you have iterated a few prototypes then you have private information. You got data that no way else has; in addition, new ideas came to you for the next prototype. Each step may have been pretty obvious to you - but from the perspective of someone who had not yet even seen the first prototype in chain, you can seem like a magical genius.

by F_J_H 15y ago

chopsueyar 15y ago

Awesome. $8 million versus $20.

zwieback 15y ago

If you think the moral of the story is that $8M were wasted due to bad management or whatever you'd be wrong. The scales were a success because they enabled the desk fan solution. Manufacturing line operators are very clever but they don't necessarily have the right incentive. The loss to the company wasn't visible but the horns and flashing lights were. I used to build inspection systems for manufacturing lines and we'd frequently build expensive (not $8M, though) vision systems, E-Testers, etc. just to uninstall them a year or two later when the process or automation guys had found a way to prevent problems from happening in the first place.

billswift 15y ago
If not "bad management", what would you call that kind of mismatch of incentives?
- zwieback 15y ago
  Ok, good point. A better way to incent is to offer bounties for yield improvements. Most manufacturing outfits I've seen have those but they are probably too low. Here's another problem mentioned in the article, in fact it's maybe the real problem: the engineers "who were already stretched too thin" probably didn't talk to their operators and technicians often enough. When I was a manufacturing engineer I noticed how much I learned about the stuff I was building by simply hanging around the operators for significant amounts of time. Not only did I get a lot of information about the subtle ways my systems were failing, I also learned that the operators generally felt engineering was ignoring their concerns. Just listening and trying to make the operators' life better earned me so much cooperation from the floor I later had no problems getting them to try out new things for me and providing me feedback on "improvements".
6ren 15y ago
Not just incentives, but also cognition - when you change the presentation of the problem, you change the way people think about it. I think this is the reason to build prototypes that you can play with - you really will see things differently. And (hold the hate) obviousness in patent law takes this into account, by evaluating it with respect to the publicly known state of the art - but if you have iterated a few prototypes then you have private information. You got data that no way else has; in addition, new ideas came to you for the next prototype. Each step may have been pretty obvious to you - but from the perspective of someone who had not yet even seen the first prototype in chain, you can seem like a magical genius.