In the early 1990's, I was working as a temporary employee after my first job layoff.  I was working at a plastic parts manufacturer as a machine operator.  There were about 150 employees working in this company and there were three shifts, etc.  Hundreds of different types of parts were manufactured here, such as parts for sewing machines; smoke detectors; television and computer housings, and so forth. 

Somebody on the graveyard shift came up with this idea, and in 2010, I still think this is one of the best ideas I've ever seen...and it didn't cost the company a penny!  I'll try to paint the picture for the reader.

Almost everyone is familiar with a conveyor belt, and knows what one looks like, etc.  These two parts were produced at the same time by the maching, and both fell onto the conveyor belt.  The two parts landed almost at the same place all the time, and travelled down the conveyor belt.  A cardboard box was placed on the floor to catch the parts after they came down the conveyor, etc.

When the box was full of parts, the operator would dump the box of parts on a table, and begin separating the parts and checking for blemishes, burns, etc.  So, how does a person make this task easier and more efficient to save time and money? 

The idea didn't cost the company a penny and was made of cardboard and some tape.  Every company has cardboard and tape around.  A strip of cardboard was cut about 15 inches long by about 4 inches wide.  A slot was cut out of, what would be the bottom of the cardboard when taped on the conveyor belt.  The slot was about 4 inches by one inch in dimenison.  The strip of cardboard was then taped to the conveyor belt at a 45 degree angle...and some space left at the end of the cardboard, to allow one of the parts to go around the cardboard and travel down the conveyor.

When the parts were made by the machine, they dropped pretty much in the same place all the time...the thin part on the left and the fat part on the right.  When the parts travelled down the conveyor belt...and hit the piece of cardboard...the thin wafer-like piece went through and under the slot in the cardboard.  The fat piece could not fit through the slot in the cardboard...thus it had to scoot along the cardboard, until it reached the open space between the cardboard and the conveyor...and went around the cardboard...efffectively separeting the two pieces! 

Now, two boxes were placed on the floor, catching the separated pieces, etc.  The machine operator didn't have the tedious task of separating the parts...saving quite a bit of time...when you consider that thousands of parts were made.  When this idea came about, I think over 300,000 parts were on the order...that's a lot of time-saving, etc.

All the operator had to do now, was to check for quality and he or she could do a spot check, which didn't take long. 

The company was run by a Management Team, and if the bone-heads, the bimbos and bimbetts on this so-called Management Team were on the ball, they would have captured this idea, and made a fixture for it out of plastic or sheet metal, and clamped in down to the conveyor for future runs. 

But, nobody did anything to capture this idea, and when the next order came in months later, the same old tired way of doing things was present.  The fellow who conceived this idea was gone, and the same old way of doing things was in effect, as the parts travelled down the conveyor and dropped into the same box on the floor.  Same old...same old...(YAWN!) 

When the company closed about a year later, this was only one tiny reason why...the boneheads on this so-called Management Team...who you couldn't tell anything! 

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