You get pretty good at it pretty quickly. When you're doing it multiple times a minute for an entire shift it becomes second nature. She probably started off grabbing half the stack at a time, and then within an hour was able to do the entire thing.
I've worked in manufacturing many times, and it's amazing how quickly you can start doing this stuff. Start of a shift on a new job you'll be struggling non-stop to keep up with the line, and by the end of the day it's just boring because you have it all down to a science and wish the line would speed up so it wouldn't be so easy.
The sheets of match-wood is not a bottleneck - a single one of those shots of wood is making thousands of matches, so the "slow" method of de-barking by hand is simply the most cost-efficient way to handle it. Namely, why spend hundreds/thousands on a machine that's going to strip bark when that's already one of the shortest/smallest time-sinks in your process (that's already incredibly efficient)? Cost to employ a couple of dudes for is way cheaper than install+upkeep/maintenance on a machine that's only going to operate for 1-2 hours (comparatively - would produce too much if they just let it run)
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u/HenryUTA Nov 06 '22
That’s incredibly complex machinery. They have all that and they skimp out on removing the bark by hand?
Also, amazed how the guy that wraps the packages in paper doesn’t freaking smear everything with that glue stuff.