A walk to my birthplace Day 66 (208 Km covered so far)

Weekend always helped. Walked 8 Km in the evening and now a distance of covering 240Km by 18^th looks pretty ok.

As I walked today, the theme of wisdom continued in my mind. While yesterday I narrated a story of father and son, today I am going to share a real life case that was shared with me by one of my colleagues.

One of the leading FMCG Companies faced a peculiar issue. Some of the cartons shipped out by them to the distributors, that were supposed to be filled with toothpaste packs, were found empty! This was a huge embarrassment for company’s reputation. The company set up a competent task force and also appointed a consultant. Finally they came out with a solution that included an ultra-sensitive landing pad at the end of the conveyor belt. This included integration with IT system and an alarm system. Whenever an empty box came out of the conveyor belt, the landing pad would sense it and set an alarm. It would also generate a trigger for  IT system. Company spent a total sum of about half a million dollars but the problem was finally solved.

The alarm went off for the first few days ensuring that no empty carton was shipped out. After about 10/15 days the alarm stopped but there was no problem of empty cartons as well. Everyone was little puzzled and the task force decided to visit the site. When they visited, they saw an elderly worker working closer to the system they had installed. There was also a big table-fan running in full speed next to conveyor belt. “What is this?” they asked. The elderly worker said with a slight irritation, “That thing was ringing a bell whenever an empty box came on. It disturbed me while working. So, I kept this fan. Whenever there is an empty box, it gets blown away by the fan!” The learned men looked at each other sheepishly and the half million spent haunted them!!

Hilarious as it may sound, different versions of this story regularly happen in many organizations. People who work on the ground are never involved in solving problems to which they are closest to! That not only causes cost over-runs but somewhere the wisdom gets buried over a period!