(Share) "The empty soap box"

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 workman was posed with the same problem, 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.                                
                           



Moral of the story: Always look for simple solutions. Devise the simplest possible solution that solves the problem.

A sweet joke

A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her shower when the doorbell rings. 

 

After a few seconds of arguing over which one should go and answer the doorbell, the wife gives up, quickly wraps herself up in a towel and runs downstairs. 

 

When she opens the door, there stands Bob, the next-door neighbor.

Before she says a word, Bob says, “I’ll give you £800 to drop that towel that you have on”

After thinking for a moment, the woman drops her towel and stands naked in front of Bob.

After a few seconds, Bob hands her £800 and leaves. Confused, but excited about her good fortune, the woman wraps back up in the towel and goes back upstairs.

When she gets back to the bathroom, her husband asks from the shower, “Who was that?”

“It was Bob the next door neighbor,” she replies.

“Great,” the husband says, “did he say anything about the £800 he owes me?”

Moral of the Story : Decision making without critical information is fatal !

        

Coke and Pepsi

In the 1980’s the two big soft drink giants Coke and Pepsi were in business in USA. Both companies had good management.

Every meeting of the Pepsi and Coke teams in their conference hall used to be towards taking over the market share of each other. Very soon they realized that they were not making any headway in boosting their sales or profit.

But Coke team realised their mistake and changed their strategy. So Coke changed their agenda now to get their own sales and profit to increase by 0.1 % every month. In fact, their endeavor now was now to compete against their own capabilities.

The Coke company was initially succeeding in achieving their goal of 0.1 % increase in sales monthly. But after a few months the company found that even this small 0.1% increase in sales becoming difficult to cope with.

One day the CEO of Coke thought to change the strategy once again. He did a market survey to find out what is the total consumption of fluids of an average American.

The results were amazing. Each American drinks about 1.5 liters of fluids including water, tea, coffee, beer etc a day on an average and out that only 30 ml was soft drinks like Coke and Pepsi.

Now their conference was concentrating only on how to increase this 30 ml quota to at least 300 ml to start with. One of the executives suggested that they should make Coke available to the people when ever and where ever they felt thirsty or wanted to drink some thing.

To this end, Coke put up vending machines at every street corner. Coke sales were up more than ten times from then on and Pepsi has never quite caught up since.

Moral of the story : “Challenge and compete against your own capabilities, if you want to excel.” 

Decision Making

The story given here is quite interesting and really gives us an insight into decision making :

A group of children were playing near the railway tracks,one of them was active track while the other was disused.Only one child played on the disused track,rest on the operational track.

Suppose you are the driver of the train and you are just at the track interchange.
You could make the train change its course to the disused track and save most of the kids.

However,that would also mean that the lone child playing on the disused track would be sacrificed. Or would you rather let the train go its way ?

Think over this situation for 2 minutes(10 times the original action time).


Most of the people would divert the train to sacrifice only one child.To save most of the children at the expense of only one child was rational decision most people would make,morally and emotionally.

BUT,have you ever thought that the child choosing to play on the disused track had infact made the right decision to play at the safe place ?

Nevertheless,he had to be sacrificed because of his ignorant friends who chose to play where the danger was.

This kind of dilemma happens around us everyday.In the office,in community,in politics,and especially in the democratic society,the minority is often sacrificed for the majority no matter how foolish or ignorant the majority are,and how farsighted and knowledgeable the minority are.

The child who chose not to play with the rest,on the operational track was sidelined.And in the case he was sacrificed,no one would shed a tear.

To make the proper decision is not try to change the course of the train because the kids playing on operational track should have known very well that the track was still in use,and that they should have run away if they heard the train's sirens.

If the train was diverted to the disused track,we could put the life of all the on board passengers at stake.And in your attempt to save a few kids by sacrificing one child,you might end up sacrificing hundreds of people to save these few kids.

Moral of the Story : What's right isn't always popular and what's popular isn't always right !