Japanese Case
A store manager was receiving fresh stock of luxury bath soaps from a manufacturer, and while it was been stacked on the shelf, one of the assistant's found one wrapper without a soap and brought it to the notice of the store manager, who promptly directed the complaint to the works manager of the soap manufacturer. Japanese are know to be very quality conscious, so the works manager apologized profusely, not only arranged for immediate replacement, but also took the empty wrapper back for conducting an inquiry as how this could have happened with all their rigorous processes.
As is customary in Japan, their management style involves everyone from the top to the bottom, so there was a meeting arranged which had people from the R&D, Plant Operations to the shop floor supervisors. The problem was stated and they were all asked to go to the depths of it to try and ensure a thing like this would never happen again. A deadline of a week was suggested for obtaining solutions, and so each of the departments involved went into action.
The day of the deadline arrived, and the presentations made.
The R&D worked closely with the Plant Operations to understand the entire process from raw material to finished product, and suggested that scanners, and x-ray machines be installed all along the production line so that they would get digitized reports and pictures, which would ensure there is zero slippage. It was a fabulous recommendation, but it would cost the company a great deal of money for installing technology for this.
Next was the presentation of the shop floor. They knew the entire process from raw material to finished product, and their recommendation was restricted to the last stage only. They said while the production is in process and the soap made gets wrapped, in the final stage when it is going to the packing section, they should have huge blower installed just near a conveyor belt which carries the finished product. If it contains the soap the blower will not be able to blow it away but if it was only a wrapper, it will get blown off.
The management after listening to both sides decided to use the recommendations of the shop floor as it was not as much expensive, easy to install and maintain, and apart from all that it was a fail proof method which involves the simplest technology and the human element.
The management acknowledged it was "SMART WORK."
Russian Story
It's about travelling in space beyond today's gel technology days, when only pens filled with ink was in vogue. The American astronauts after a trip into space came back to base and complained to the R&D @ NASA that they had trouble using a pen in space as the zero gravity up thee didn't allow ink to flow.
The researcher went down to work on the problem spent several hours on the subject and were spending several thousands of dollars on experiments but none of it was getting them close to solving the problem. Days had passed into months without any solution in sight. The American style of management is one which keeps things only at the top level, the y do not allow it to trickle down. Anyway now that they were not getting anywhere, the sent this down to the floor and everyone began to think of a solution, and one kid who was an intern doing space research came to know about this and said, "Oh is that the problem you all are discussing so massively. The solution is pretty simple, use a pencil." Every one was amazed at this suggestion which was 100% workable and so they asked the kid, "how did you strike such a brilliant idea."
The kid laughed and said, "it was pretty simple, I saw a documentary of the first man who went to space, Yuri Gagarin, and I saw distinctly his suing a pencil for scrathing his back as well as for taking notes."
So that's "SMARTNESS"
A store manager was receiving fresh stock of luxury bath soaps from a manufacturer, and while it was been stacked on the shelf, one of the assistant's found one wrapper without a soap and brought it to the notice of the store manager, who promptly directed the complaint to the works manager of the soap manufacturer. Japanese are know to be very quality conscious, so the works manager apologized profusely, not only arranged for immediate replacement, but also took the empty wrapper back for conducting an inquiry as how this could have happened with all their rigorous processes.
As is customary in Japan, their management style involves everyone from the top to the bottom, so there was a meeting arranged which had people from the R&D, Plant Operations to the shop floor supervisors. The problem was stated and they were all asked to go to the depths of it to try and ensure a thing like this would never happen again. A deadline of a week was suggested for obtaining solutions, and so each of the departments involved went into action.
The day of the deadline arrived, and the presentations made.
The R&D worked closely with the Plant Operations to understand the entire process from raw material to finished product, and suggested that scanners, and x-ray machines be installed all along the production line so that they would get digitized reports and pictures, which would ensure there is zero slippage. It was a fabulous recommendation, but it would cost the company a great deal of money for installing technology for this.
Next was the presentation of the shop floor. They knew the entire process from raw material to finished product, and their recommendation was restricted to the last stage only. They said while the production is in process and the soap made gets wrapped, in the final stage when it is going to the packing section, they should have huge blower installed just near a conveyor belt which carries the finished product. If it contains the soap the blower will not be able to blow it away but if it was only a wrapper, it will get blown off.
The management after listening to both sides decided to use the recommendations of the shop floor as it was not as much expensive, easy to install and maintain, and apart from all that it was a fail proof method which involves the simplest technology and the human element.
The management acknowledged it was "SMART WORK."
Russian Story
It's about travelling in space beyond today's gel technology days, when only pens filled with ink was in vogue. The American astronauts after a trip into space came back to base and complained to the R&D @ NASA that they had trouble using a pen in space as the zero gravity up thee didn't allow ink to flow.
The researcher went down to work on the problem spent several hours on the subject and were spending several thousands of dollars on experiments but none of it was getting them close to solving the problem. Days had passed into months without any solution in sight. The American style of management is one which keeps things only at the top level, the y do not allow it to trickle down. Anyway now that they were not getting anywhere, the sent this down to the floor and everyone began to think of a solution, and one kid who was an intern doing space research came to know about this and said, "Oh is that the problem you all are discussing so massively. The solution is pretty simple, use a pencil." Every one was amazed at this suggestion which was 100% workable and so they asked the kid, "how did you strike such a brilliant idea."
The kid laughed and said, "it was pretty simple, I saw a documentary of the first man who went to space, Yuri Gagarin, and I saw distinctly his suing a pencil for scrathing his back as well as for taking notes."
So that's "SMARTNESS"
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