In ‘59 Kraus Klinghoeffer made use of a Type 2 Double Cab when he was running the maintenance crew over at the Halo Soap Company (“Washes away everything but your past!”) here in Fort Stockton. By and large he kept things running like a Swiss watch, both with the Transporter and the production line.
That is, until Halo started shipping boxes with no bars of soap in them. Not good for business. Rather than ask Klaus to look into it, the CEO hired a consulting firm from Austin to analyze the situation. Four months and three hundred thousand dollars later a brand new, high tech precision device was installed on the end of the production line. The scale it contained would actually weigh each box as it came off the line. If the scale indicated an empty box, an alarm would go off and the line would come to an immediate halt. At that point an employee would then walk over, take the empty box off the line and then press a button to restart the line.
The improvements had their intended effect. Every box shipped was full. Every customer was happy again. At the end of the first week the CEO received a report showing that the line had been stopped 157 times for empty boxes. The following week it stopped for 164. Week three passed with 159.
And then something unusual took place. In week 4 the alarm didn’t go off a single time. The production line never stopped, and not a single customer called to report an empty box.
Launching an immediate internal investigation, the CEO soon discovered that Klaus had taken the Transporter into town and made a stop at the Rusty Hammer Hardware Store. Seems he spent $6.59 of his own and bought a box fan. He placed it at the end of the production line. Every empty box was blown right off the line and into a trash can on the other side.
German engineering is complex in its simplicity, elegant in just how plain it can be.
No way you can’t be a fan.
9 responses to “NON-COMPETE KLAUS”
Too bad that Klaus didn’t have a solution for his management’s failure to understand that the word factory has seven letters and the building was only 6 windows wide!
While I applaud Klaus for his common sense solution, and shake my head at the corporate heads for spending 300K on their solution, no one identified the root cause of why the boxes were empty.
That would require another study.
I’d imagine that the unnamed consulting firm is still around, larger and more lucrative than ever, with a steady stream of politicians as clients.
While I admire Klaus’ solution, that’s pretty half assed for a German. The proper solution is to find out who is falling down on the job and not filling the boxes, take him out back, get up in his face and growl “Ve have VAYS of making you fill ze boxes!” Preferably while wearing a monocle.
Now they all look alike, with suppository silhouettes and boring colors.
Most often, the simple solution to a problem is the best.
I agree completely.
German cars have no soul, Italian cars have a quite sexy soul, French cars are . . . well, quirky, British cars are staid, American cars are brash, Japanese cars used to be knock-off copies (see the original Lexus by Toyota LS 400 – it was a knock off of the Mercedes S500), Chinese cars are now the cheap knock-offs. My fav meme for electric cars: “The new Tesla Hearse- for when you want to be cremated on the go”
So, another example of the KISS METHOD?
Keep it simple, stupid!
Remember the cartoon with a series of drawings, creating a swing hanging by a rope from a tree branch?
Rube Goldberg need not submit a project proposal.
Per the @stephendurland comment, above, Bravo!
The original Toyota and Datsun were also unabashedly direct knockoffs. Did the USA really need a cheap version of a Fiat? Maybe not, but Japan’s economy surely did, and building their export market expansion in the mid-1960s opened the floodgates, especially as quality and reliability improved. My wife’s 1965 (1966?) Toyota Corona with stick shift on the column seemed a stout, if uninspiring appliance, especially when burdened with A/C which was critical for New Orleans weather. Graduation from Tulane, hauling hand thrown pottery supplies, teaching supplies, and a German Shepherd pup who quickly grew to a rambunctious 192 pounds, she passed the Corona to her folks. The little sedan was replaced with her 1967 Toyota Crown Station Wagon – a 6 cylinder OHC with 3-on the tree an Overdrive. The poor thing was so badly geared that it could barely hold 65 mph on the open road, and we eventually sold it off in favor of our first Citroen DS-21 Pallas, later supplemented by a pair of his & hers matching 1971 Citroen D-21 Wagons. I’ve seen it noted that “The French copy no one, and No one copies the French”.