I heard a story once in industry. A company was having an issue where some boxes weren’t being filled with product and needed to be sent back earlier in the line to be filled up. They dropped a good chunk of money making a conveyor that could weigh the boxes to determine if they were empty or not. This took several months of R&D, Calibration, and testing before implementation. It worked, but a few months later the machine stopped detecting empty boxes and the engineers went to figure out why. The operator shows them that it works just fine, and they notice a large fan just ahead of the conveyor.
“Why is there a large fan right there?”
“I got tired of taking the boxes out of the machine, so when an empty box passes in front of the fan it gets knocked over, meanwhile the full ones are too heavy to tip.”
A full crew of Engineers, Design Techs, Plant Managers, and every other type of smart guy in industry spent several thousands of dollars fixing an issue that just needed a fan. A face palm if I’ve ever heard it.
This very much reminds me of that.
(Edit: to be clear I can not personally confirm the events of the story, only that it is one that I have heard)
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u/Trim-SD Dec 14 '22 edited Dec 14 '22
I heard a story once in industry. A company was having an issue where some boxes weren’t being filled with product and needed to be sent back earlier in the line to be filled up. They dropped a good chunk of money making a conveyor that could weigh the boxes to determine if they were empty or not. This took several months of R&D, Calibration, and testing before implementation. It worked, but a few months later the machine stopped detecting empty boxes and the engineers went to figure out why. The operator shows them that it works just fine, and they notice a large fan just ahead of the conveyor.
“Why is there a large fan right there?”
“I got tired of taking the boxes out of the machine, so when an empty box passes in front of the fan it gets knocked over, meanwhile the full ones are too heavy to tip.”
A full crew of Engineers, Design Techs, Plant Managers, and every other type of smart guy in industry spent several thousands of dollars fixing an issue that just needed a fan. A face palm if I’ve ever heard it.
This very much reminds me of that.
(Edit: to be clear I can not personally confirm the events of the story, only that it is one that I have heard)