Vitek VTC-3516 Specifikace stáhnout pdf (Strana 41)

Design and Applied Technology (Secondary 4-6)

S T O P A N D T H I N K

Case Studies

Focus on Problems vs. Focus on Solutions

Case 1

‘Empty soap box’ is a classic management case. It happened in very large cosmetics

companies.

One day, a consumer complained that the box of soap he bought was empty. The authorities

of the company immediately isolated the problem to the assembly line. During the

manufacturing process, the assembly line was responsible for transporting all packed boxes

of soap to the delivery department. For some reason, one of the many soap boxes went

through the assembly line was empty.

Management asked the engineers to solve the problem. The engineers worked hard and

hurried to devise an X-ray machine for monitoring. Under this setting, two persons had to

be assigned to monitor all soap boxes that passed through the line, ensuring the boxes were

not empty. Sure enough, it was a very labour intensive and time demanding task.

When the same problem was faced by a small company, the situation went differently. The

company had no complicated methods, such as X-rays. Instead, the company placed a

strong industrial electric fan at a point of the assembly line, letting those empty, light-in-

weight boxes blown away. The fan is an appropriate technology in this case.

Moral of the story is Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS). Do look for simple solutions, and

devise the simplest possible solution that solves the problem.

Case 2

It came from attention of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) that

pens did not work in space since ink did not flow down to the writing surface under zero

gravity. NASA thus spent a decade and USD12 million to develop a pen that could write

under different environments and situations, such as zero gravity, upside down, underwater,

from below freezing to over 300°C, and even crystal surface.

What did Russians do with the same problem? A pencil - an appropriate technology for the

solution.

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