Thursday, February 22, 2007

Solution



An interesting forward i received .. though i cannot guarantee the veracity of the following instances but they make for an entertaining read:

Learn to focus on solutions and not on problems.

Case 1:

When NASA began the launch of astronauts into space, they found out that the pens wouldn't work at zero gravity (ink won't flow down to the writing surface). To solve this problem, it took them one decade and $12 million.

They developed a pen that worked at zero gravity, upside down, underwater, in practically any surface including crystal and in a temperature range from below freezing to over 300 degrees C. And what did the Russians do...?? They used a pencil.

Case 2:

One of the most memorable case studies on Japanese management was the case of the empty soap box, which happened in one of Japan's biggest cosmetics companies. The company received a complaint that a consumer had bought a soap box that was empty. Immediately the authorities isolated the problem to the assembly line, which transported all the packaged boxes of soap to the delivery department. For some reason, one soap box went through the assembly line empty. Management asked its engineers to solve the problem.

Post-haste, the engineers worked hard to devise an X-ray machine with high-resolution monitors manned by two people to watch all the soap boxes that passed through the line to make sure they were not empty.

No doubt, they worked hard and they worked fast but they spent whoopee amount to do so.

But when a rank-and-file employee in a small company was posed with the same problem, he did not get into complications of X-rays, etc., but instead came out with another solution. He bought a strong industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan on, and as each soap box passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes out of the line.

5 comments:

Sriram said...

I cant believe the americans didn't think of the pencil. in fact they use pencil even in college unlike us Indians for whom pencil belong with the other childish things u must give up after 10th. but who cares, that was a good lesson. remember hearing the soap story in college, i think that marketing prof had told us abt it no?

Sriram said...

tw, change the black background

Nikita Merchant & Sriharsh Mallela said...

I like the black backgound ... i do not recall anyone in college telling us this story ..

Sriram said...

that Introduction to Marketing prof, I think his name was Pravin.

Sriram said...

update!