Top Ten Messes; Mess #9
Chicken Soup for the Landfill
It seems like there is always some cost to progress. There definitely was a downside to our new high speed line which would fill and seal soup cans at the rate of 400 cans per minute. This equals almost 7 cans per second. When you look at the line while it was running, it was almost a blur.
As the cans passed over the scale at this speed they were weighed with incredible accuracy. The scale had a display which was an average of 20 cans. Even this took some concentration to watch.
My job in quality control was to make sure that weight was being made on the cans of soup. The soup cans had to be filled with the correct amount of solids and liquid, but had to have an empty space at the top so when it went into the cooker, the bubble would stir the contents to insure commercial sterilization.
The line was very reliable. If a can did not make weight, a puff of compressed air would blow the can off of the conveyor into a barrel.
This was all fine, but often the filler would need adjusted. It takes some time to adjust the fill weights. You cannot just adjust it without it running at full speed.
Here is the problem; You are adjusting the line, and it only takes you a minute. You just sent 400 cans of soup flying off into a 55 gallon drum. It holds about 200.
It was not uncommon to go back to the line and see a thousand or so cans of soup in several barrels.
What if something was out of spec? If the condition lasted for 10 minutes, that was 4,000 cans. The line ran 192,000 cans a shift.
Looking at this situation, I recall the instant when I seriously questioned if I wanted that job any more.
The Game
I was a crew leader in a department at the time. We got unwelcome distractions of all kinds.
A woman who was helping our department from another department approached me while I was extremely busy. She said, "I don't like the game you're playing."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't like the game you're playing."
"What game? What are you talking about?"
"The GAME."
"Okay, I give up. I really don't know what you are talking about."
"You really don't, do you?
"No, I don't"
"Okay, never mind." Then she walked away.