Lines, Butts and
DOUBLE BUTTS

Given the right lines opens up systematic reproductions. 

1  An Australian window manufacturer that I interviewed showed me a versatile curved line creator that allowed his workers to reproduce curved window frames to match the exact needs of architects around the world.  "All they have to do is follow the line."

2  Using a system, one rations mixer showed me how to improvise an operation according to the permutations required.  "No matter how many different feeds go into the mix if you only have one truck at that location then all you need is one operator for all the equipment being used.  One man can park the truck, get on the loader and load all the feeds that go into the mix.  It doesn't matter how short the delivery route is, having a second operator there to run the loader will not make sense financially.

3  "The length of the delivery route will determine the number of trucks that can run before you will be better off to have an extra operator to run the loader.  Now you can figure it out mathematically from the office, but that can seldom take road conditions into consideration.  However, if I'm standing there on the spot my eye knows that if one truck is waiting for one or more ahead of it to finish before it can move up then we need an operator for the loader.  If the trucks are still stacking up then we need to add more operators until they quit stacking up."

4  Then he told me about the stop lines and go lines.  "When the operator of a loader knows exactly where s/he has to stop then s/he can go twice as fast, and no matter how many different places s/he is coming from.  That's why the first thing I do is put visible tape lines on the ground that tell the drivers exactly where to park. (Today the same principle is used on a wobble stick that tells Grandma when to stop before she hits the brick wall of her garage.)  As long as they are parking in the same spot every time I can have any number of trucks safely coming in.  Operators can move to ten or fifteen different locations in a single day and because of those lines they will know exactly where to stop at each location without hitting the sides of any of the trucks."

The only problem was that many times each day the crews would shut down and sit down while the man that could read the blueprints struggled to lay out another prototype for them.  He would go from crew to crew and square everything up right in the middle of the floor. 

Then one of the unskilled workers showed him how to lay out any prototype quickly so that it would always automatically square it up.  He did it with lines.  "These lines are always square.  Therefore if you line up your prototype with them your prototype will always be square, automatically.  By putting measurements on the lines you can square up the cross boards automatically too."  From that day forward they never had another crew waiting around for the next prototype to be made.

After seeing the improvement that came from those lines the owner developed jigs and double-sided jigs for the end boards.  "Push these jigs into place and the boards are butted automatically into the right place.  Bingo.  Nail her down."

What do you do
when the untrained eye can't tell the difference?

That's when you give the untrained eye something that it can see.

One multi-million dollar plastics company had eighty nine different products with only minute differentiating qualities that took months and even years for accurate recognition patterns to develop in new workers.  Again and again the wrong products would be mixed with orders ready for shipment, necessitating long delays while Quality Control sorted out the mess. 

After the company had struggled with the problem for years an untrained worker suggested that the foreman mark the different baskets supplying the orders with color-coded placards.

Thereafter the products which collected in baskets with blue placards were deposited into larger baskets with the same blue placard on the side.  New people still couldn't see any difference in the product, but the placard was visible and identifiable to everyone.  Overnight the problem of mixed products went away and never happened again.

This same principles can help the blind to see
and the deaf to hear.

Another problem that company had was the time and resources required for adequate quality control.  Thirteen lines of inspectors would sort out the good and throw away the bad.  When one product got isolated, the same untrained worker noticed that after the same machine had gone through three cycles then the quality control required had dropped progressively to almost nil.  In other words, 99% of the bad products came from the first batch.  But that didn't matter because the company had ALL of the product being dropped into the same basket and the bad product still had to be sorted out.  Therefore our unskilled worker created a tool that he called a PREPONDERATOR.

His Preponderator let the production operator shunt the first 100 product directly to an inspection line operator. Adjustments would then be made if necessary.   Depending on qualifiable results the Preponderator could be adjusted to give 90, 80 or 70 out of 100 products to the  top inspection line operator.  Again, depending on results and correction efforts in the manufacturing process, the Preponderator was adjusted to pull out fewer and fewer product from the production.  For a final polish of quality control the untrained worker also suggested that the best inspection line operator work the first batch, then lesser skilled inspectors do the second, and then the general line do all the rest.  As a result quality control actually improved drastically while greatly diminishing the inspection time required. 

Here's another example:  Do you see the way this page is set up -- table of text -- ad -- table of text -- ad?  For each section of all of my web sites I have the tables already set up on a MAKE READY PAGE.  In the first table I patch in up to 200 words.  In each succeeding table I patch in up to 400 words.  At the most it takes only five minutes to have a new article patched in -- and that includes making the header and patching in the author's essential resources.  Yes, there is software out there that will do this for me automatically, but when it finishes you've either got lopsided pages -- or thoughts have been broken up and continuity destroyed. 

My Make Ready Page for each section is also set up so that I can change the background for every article in the entire section with one little click.

When you save time you make money.  Maybe you're not a Thomas Massey, but you can still draw out a representation of the challenges in your life and work methodically to clear them.  The results are definitely worth it.