Blown Cartons

To be completely honest with you, I’m a pretty lazy guy. I’m always looking for an easier ways to do things. I believe, as did Robert Heinlein, that, “All progress is made by a lazy person looking for an easier way.” (Click Here for more info) I am always interested in hearing about lazy improvements and recently heard one I thought I would pass along.

The plant was packing toothpaste tubes into cartons and empty cartons were making it out into stores. They installed a checkweigher to weigh each carton. Underweight cartons would be rejected automatically. If 3 empty cartons in a row were detected, the checkweigher would stop, an alarm would sound, and the checkweigher would need to be reset.

Not long after the checkweigher was installed, the packaging manager noticed that it was finding no empties. Since nothing had changed, she was curious what happened.

She found they frequently had multiple empties triggering the shutdown. The operators and others found that resetting the alarm was annoying. Being the smart folks that they were, they were too lazy to be bothered with it. Their solution? They put a fan on the conveyor. When an empty carton passed the fan, it was light enough that it would be blown off the conveyor. When a full carton passed, it was heavy enough not to be affected.

Another victory for laziness! How can you be lazy today? What can you do to make your job easier?

Yes, if the problem was this common, the above is only a bandaid. They really need to fix the root cause, which would be something in the cartoning machine. Failing that, this seems like an ingenious and lazy solution.