Solving an Engineering Problem

[727Sky]

 
Maintenance People Rule ?…………..hic ! * ?
 
 
 

Solving an Engineering Problem
You don't have to be an engineer to appreciate this story.
Procter & Gamble had a problem. They sometimes shipped empty Crest toothpaste boxes without the tube inside. This challenged their perceived quality with the buyers and distributors. Understanding how important the relationship with them was, the CEO of the company assembled his top people. They decided to hire an external engineering company to solve their empty boxes problem. The project followed the usual process: budget and project sponsor allocated, RFP, and third-parties selected. Six months (and $8 million) later they had a fantastic solution– on time, on budget and high quality. Everyone in the project was pleased.

They solved the problem by using a high-tech precision scale that would sound a bell and flash lights whenever a toothpaste box weighed less than it should. The line would stop, someone would walk over, remove the defective box, and then press another button to re-start the line. As a result of the new package-monitoring process, no empty boxes were being shipped out of the factory.

With no more customer complaints, the CEO felt the $8 million was well spent. He then reviewed the line statistics report and discovered the number of empty boxes picked up by the scale in the first week was consistent with projections, however, the next three weeks were zero! The estimated rate should have been at least a dozen boxes a day. He had the engineers check the equipment, they verified the report as accurate.

Puzzled, the CEO travelled down to the factory, viewed the part of the line where the precision scale was installed, and observed just ahead of the new $8 million dollar solution sat a $20 desk fan blowing the empty boxes off the belt and into a bin. He asked the line supervisor what that was about.
"Oh, that," the supervisor replied, "Bert, the kid from maintenance, put it there because he was tired of walking over, removing the box and re-starting the line every time the bell rang.”

[BIAD]

A great anecdote and the fundamentals are probably true!
(Said an ex- Maintenance man!)



I recall a time when computers -(the big bulky ones) were first being introduced at a newspaper
company I worked for. A co-worker and I lugged them in and after having to stand and watch
like two school-boys, as the newly-acquired white coat-wearing 'IT' guys showed us how to
unpack the contents, we gave them the impression that vaguely understood.

Realising that the Electrician Dept. hadn't put the sockets in the appropriate places, they requested
a number of extension cables in order to fire the computers up and prepare a networking system
that included something we dumb-maintenance guys wouldn't understand called 'the internet'.

These two state-of-the-art chaps used expressions like 'clean-lines' and 'dirty-lines' and assured us that
if a cleaner -yer' know, one of those 'lesser' people, plugged their vacuum-cleaner into the wrong socket,
then the whole fragile web of magic would go 'poof'.
Me and my mate just nodded and went about our work.

The Saturday after the installation, monitors started 'striking', flashes of interruption on the screens
as if an electrical short  was somehow effecting the Journalists' perspicacious flow.
The special 'IT' guys appeared from their wire-festooned office and pondered what the matter may be.

My friend and I were on time-and-a-half pay from 6.00.am until noon on a Saturday, but if we were still
there after twelve o'clock lunch time, that rate went up to double-bubble pay.

Could it be a faulty walkie-talkie left by the operator in a tower crane on the construction-site next to us...?
What if the sensitive equipment installed by these marvels of technology was picking-up the radar from the
local airport?
It may even be industrial sabotage from a rival company?
All suggestions from the enlightened technicians who knew what 'pdf' meant.

Do you know how much extension cables cost in the UK back in the late-eighties...? Well, if you had a
choice in paying for one or just unplugging the cable that fed the water-cooler and stuffing it in your
bag in the early hours of the morning, then that's what you'd do. Surely?

And the cooler? the one with the faulty thermostat...? Why you'd just plug it into the nearest socket
if you're a Journalist, after all, you tell the plebs about clean and dirty power sources, not skilled artistes.

My co-worker waited until around 3.30.pm in the afternoon before he related to the searching geniuses
what he'd seen at 11.45.am that same day and the problem was fixed. Monday's newspaper had been
rescued by the intrepid duo with their tiny screwdrivers and multi-coloured wires.

It was another ten years before I happened to be visiting my friend's house and following him to his garage
for a tool to borrow, I noticed an extension cable hanging on a hook that I'd swear was from the place we
used to work at.

Cheers for the overtime, mate!

[F2d5thCav]

Reminds me of a site we had that suffered regular equipment power failure, about the same time every work day.

Came down to the cleaning woman unplugging the gear so she could plug in her vacuum cleaner.  For her, the equipment she was unplugging was just a box with blinking lamps.

Cheers

[TheRedneck]

My first job out of high school was in the engineering department of a local nuclear plant that was being built. Not as an engineer, mind you, that was for the "smart" people... but as a draftsman and later on as a engineering technician.

Now, this nuclear plant was a two-unit plant. Two completely separate units, both identical and built side by side, connected to a single control room with two separate and identical controls. Each unit had a diesel generator... not your typical run-of-the-mill diesel engine, mind you... no, this thing had cylinders a grown man could stand up in and filled a room the size of an airport hangar. Attached to that room was one for the "exhaust silencer" (which in English translates to "muffler").

Both diesel generator pipelines had supports installed based on the exact same specifications, The day came when it was time to test Unit One... the diesel engine was fired up and after a few minutes, one of the drainage lines to the muffle snapped in half. It wasn't able to take the vibration. Something had to be done!

So the engineers were called in. The entire pipeline was analyzed along with every support. They spent weeks going over the issue and finally theorized (correctly) that the vibrations coming from the diesel engine were too severe for the seismic design used elsewhere (compared to the Richter scale, that thing was peaking around a 9.5!). So they had the entire pipe support systems redesigned to stricter tolerances... for Unit One. One redneck-looking kid mentioned to the engineers that maybe they should do the same thing for Unit Two, but he was just an engineering tech.

It worked. Everyoe was happy until the exact same thing happened with Unit Two. The exact same scenario happened again, this time with some redneck-looking young kid trying to explain they already had the solution worked out... but what did he know? He was just an engineering tech.

Later on, when I went back to school and got my degree, I realized why. Colleges don't teach common sense solutions. Colleges teach high-tech solutions that make them look good because their students then go out and invent things that no one ever needed before because there were easier and better ways.

Thanks for the stories. I can always use a good laugh!

TheRedneck

[kdog]

That was awesome! Thank you for sharing that, made me laugh hard. 

Most of the time it is the simplest of solutions that is discovered by a lazy man. 

I always tell me apprentices work smarter, not harder. 

[kdog]

My first job out of high school was in the engineering department of a local nuclear plant that was being built. Not as an engineer, mind you, that was for the "smart" people... but as a draftsman and later on as a engineering technician.

Now, this nuclear plant was a two-unit plant. Two completely separate units, both identical and built side by side, connected to a single control room with two separate and identical controls. Each unit had a diesel generator... not your typical run-of-the-mill diesel engine, mind you... no, this thing had cylinders a grown man could stand up in and filled a room the size of an airport hangar. Attached to that room was one for the "exhaust silencer" (which in English translates to "muffler").

Both diesel generator pipelines had supports installed based on the exact same specifications, The day came when it was time to test Unit One... the diesel engine was fired up and after a few minutes, one of the drainage lines to the muffle snapped in half. It wasn't able to take the vibration. Something had to be done!

So the engineers were called in. The entire pipeline was analyzed along with every support. They spent weeks going over the issue and finally theorized (correctly) that the vibrations coming from the diesel engine were too severe for the seismic design used elsewhere (compared to the Richter scale, that thing was peaking around a 9.5!). So they had the entire pipe support systems redesigned to stricter tolerances... for Unit One. One redneck-looking kid mentioned to the engineers that maybe they should do the same thing for Unit Two, but he was just an engineering tech.

It worked. Everyoe was happy until the exact same thing happened with Unit Two. The exact same scenario happened again, this time with some redneck-looking young kid trying to explain they already had the solution worked out... but what did he know? He was just an engineering tech.

Later on, when I went back to school and got my degree, I realized why. Colleges don't teach common sense solutions. Colleges teach high-tech solutions that make them look good because their students then go out and invent things that no one ever needed before because there were easier and better ways.

Thanks for the stories. I can always use a good laugh!

TheRedneck

As an elevator mechanic modernizing old elevators, every job is different but you get the same equipment that you have to make work with the old. I like to task an apprentice with something and let them try to figure out how to do it. That's how you get some really good ideas.

[Lumenari]

Loved the post!

My father (who never finished high school) spent the last 20 years of his life specializing in log home roofing structures. Engineers don't like or understand a log... it is not a perfect cylinder, when it dries it warps and does strange things... So their "solution" was always metal. LOTS of metal.

Which makes a wood ceiling look like crap.

I watched him arguing with an engineer once in the middle of a $6 million dollar log home build in Aspen. The engineer, finally exhausted with arguing with this old man in bib overalls, told my Dad "I have a degree in structural engineering. What do you have?" My father replied "You have a sixty thousand dollar piece of paper on your wall that says you can use a fucking calculator. You don't actually know shit."

The engineer threatened to walk off the job if my father wasn't fired. So they canned the engineer. The home is still doing just great, 20 years later...



On a somewhat related note, I used to work for Conoco-Phillips.

We worked in an open area in a bunch of cubicles (I was doing Auto-Cad work for them) and the engineers had their rather massive offices on either side of us. One of the lead engineers stole our fan. What he didn't know was that it had a remote. So every so often we would walk by and turn it off.

He and his buddies took that poor fan apart a few times, trying to figure out what was happening.

Eventually the fan was tossed out of his office and we got it back.

[kdog]

Loved the post!

My father (who never finished high school) spent the last 20 years of his life specializing in log home roofing structures. Engineers don't like or understand a log... it is not a perfect cylinder, when it dries it warps and does strange things... So their "solution" was always metal. LOTS of metal.

Which makes a wood ceiling look like crap.

I watched him arguing with an engineer once in the middle of a $6 million dollar log home build in Aspen. The engineer, finally exhausted with arguing with this old man in bib overalls, told my Dad "I have a degree in structural engineering. What do you have?"  My father replied "You have a sixty thousand dollar piece of paper on your wall that says you can use a fucking calculator. You don't actually know shit."

The engineer threatened to walk off the job if my father wasn't fired. So they canned the engineer.  The home is still doing just great, 20 years later...



On a somewhat related note, I used to work for Conoco-Phillips.

We worked in an open area in a bunch of cubicles (I was doing Auto-Cad work for them) and the engineers had their rather massive offices on either side of us. One of the lead engineers stole our fan. What he didn't know was that it had a remote.  So every so often we would walk by and turn it off.

He and his buddies took that poor fan apart a few times, trying to figure out what was happening.

Eventually the fan was tossed out of his office and we got it back.

Now that's some funny shit right there, both stories. 

I like fucking with our engineers.

[NightskyeB4Dawn]

I recall a time when computers -(the big bulky ones) were first being introduced at a newspaper
company I worked for. A co-worker and I lugged them in and after having to stand and watch
like two school-boys, as the newly-acquired white coat-wearing 'IT' guys showed us how to
unpack the contents, we gave them the impression that vaguely understood.

My first real job was working for the Navy as a keypunch operator. Back when computers took up a whole room. The computers processed cards that were punched, verified, and ran through collators. We programmed the computer by wiring large boards. Oh how far we have come.

The IT guys, which were repair guys, sat beside the computers the whole shift, because they would go down at least ten times a shift.