Post by Woody Walker on May 10, 2008 21:15:35 GMT -5
This humorous engineering story comes from a former engineering boss of mine (we’ll call him Jim) as he was working his way up through the design ranks.
After he graduated from engineering school he was hired by a packaging machine company. One of his first projects was a bubble gum packaging machine. The machine counted out the old fashioned grape and sour apple gum balls and put them into boxes, 100 at a time in about 10 seconds.
He had everything working well except for a diverter flap that redirected the gum balls to the next box when the count was finished. It was working to specification, but the performance bar was raised at the last minute – his machine had to package the gum balls in six seconds instead of ten seconds if they expected to keep a customer that was scheduled to visit that day.
So when the customer arrived, Jim's boss asked him to speed up the whole machine. Without even a test-run, the boss confidently brought the customer in the room and bragged on the capabilities of their packaging machine. He asked Jim to turn it on and let it run.
The machine ran at the new speed but the flapper door malfunctioned and came off. Gum balls shot straight across the room at Jim’s boss and the customer who was eyeing the alignment of the feeder. Both of them were directly in the line of fire, and they were pelted with dozens of gum-balls as they dodged and quickly ran for cover. Jim said it would have made a great comedy movie watching those guys dodge gum balls. It was all he could do to keep from laughing with his job hanging in the balance.
Nobody was seriously hurt as the boss explained they still had a few glitches to work out. The customer nodded in agreement as business went on like it was just another day.
After he graduated from engineering school he was hired by a packaging machine company. One of his first projects was a bubble gum packaging machine. The machine counted out the old fashioned grape and sour apple gum balls and put them into boxes, 100 at a time in about 10 seconds.
He had everything working well except for a diverter flap that redirected the gum balls to the next box when the count was finished. It was working to specification, but the performance bar was raised at the last minute – his machine had to package the gum balls in six seconds instead of ten seconds if they expected to keep a customer that was scheduled to visit that day.
So when the customer arrived, Jim's boss asked him to speed up the whole machine. Without even a test-run, the boss confidently brought the customer in the room and bragged on the capabilities of their packaging machine. He asked Jim to turn it on and let it run.
The machine ran at the new speed but the flapper door malfunctioned and came off. Gum balls shot straight across the room at Jim’s boss and the customer who was eyeing the alignment of the feeder. Both of them were directly in the line of fire, and they were pelted with dozens of gum-balls as they dodged and quickly ran for cover. Jim said it would have made a great comedy movie watching those guys dodge gum balls. It was all he could do to keep from laughing with his job hanging in the balance.
Nobody was seriously hurt as the boss explained they still had a few glitches to work out. The customer nodded in agreement as business went on like it was just another day.