*Dear friends*

*Sometimes, surprisingly, the uneducated workers can come out with
incredible solutions which even his educated bosses could not have imagined.
Here is one example.*

*A lady bought some bathing soaps from a shop. When she opened one of the
packets, she found that it was empty. There was no soap in there; it was
just an empty wrapper! She lodged a complaint against the manufacturer and
got her claim. That being settled, there was a task before the management of
the soap factory. How had this happened? How could they ensure that the
incident did not occur again? They had suffered enough bad publicity besides
having to pay the compensation to the lady.*

*After a detailed investigation, it was discovered, that during the process
of wrapping, it so happened that inevitably, one or two wrappers did get
through, having no bar of soap in them! There was no way to make out the
difference between a full wrapper and an empty one. The process of handling
each one separately for this purpose seemed to be very cumbersome. So, the
technical head was given the job of devising a method to overcome the
problem. The man prepared a detailed report and proposed the setting up of a
computer based system that would weigh and scan each bar, for the empty
packs would not get detected by a normal x-ray machine. He proposed an
expenditure of a large amount to put this system into place.*

*The management heard him out and passed the order to release the funds and
to buy the machinery that he had proposed. An uneducated worker said,
"Excuse me Sir, for my impertinence, but I have a solution that shall cost a
fraction of what you are planning to go in for."*

*The management hesitated initially. But eventually they heard him out and
agreed to try out his proposal. The next day, the worker brought a strong
industrial fan. He put it at an angle near the conveyor belt on which the
packed soap bars were coming through and switched it on. The few empty
wrappers that came through got blown off by the fan! The rest of them went
past easily. *
*A simple solution, for a complex problem! This goes to prove that ideas are
not the monopoly of the educated.*

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