Meat grinder, super-robots and scientific research institutes (Not Artificial Intelligence)

If you have been running a project for years, believe me if it doesn’t look like a meat grinder knife from history number 1 or a plate from history number 2

This will help you optimize your project by throwing out all that is superfluous from it, which only slows it down.

Story # 1

The case was quite a few years ago at one of the domestic factories. Among other things, the plant produced meat grinders, the usual manual, which were in every Soviet family. Produced these meat grinders for many years, according to one technology. But there was always one problem in their production: the operation of sharpening a knife from the back side was very difficult and dangerous.

The fact is that according to the technology, the knife was sharpened from two sides, firstly, from the side that adjoins the grid (parallel to the grid), secondly, from the back side at an angle to the grid. And if there were no problems with the first part (several knives were put on sandpaper and sharpened at once), then the second operation was done entirely by hand, which was low-performing and extremely dangerous for the worker.

In 1987, the department of robotization and automation of the Electrosila plant developed an insanely expensive super-robot that accurately repeated the movement of the worker’s hands (I remind you that it was 30 years ago (!)), But its productivity was so small that the worker was returned to grinding , almost the next day.
')
To solve the problem, an external consultant from one research institute was called. The consultant began his work, naturally with an analysis ...

... and analysis from the survey. And the first question: “Why sharpen a knife from the back side?”, Put the director of the enterprise into a stupor. Then there was a meeting at which none of the plant’s employees could answer this question. The only thing that said: "So it is supposed by technology."

A little later, it turned out that since time immemorial knives were made by casting and they were initially poured into earthen forms. Therefore, it turned out uneven edge, with defects, and of course, all this had to be straightened. But quite a long time ago, the plant switched to exact casting, after which a very clean and smooth knife was obtained. For more than forty years, they have sharpened the second edge of the knife in vain ...

End of story number 1

---

And now look at your project. Is there something extra there ...

Maybe there is an extra block of code that has not been needed for a long time (for example, due to the new features of modern browsers)? Or are there extra business processes that just slow down? Or maybe extra employees?

In my practice of consulting, I can say that this happens in most projects older than five years. But there are projects in which it is impossible to exclude an operation, but you really want to, then you need to make some changes.

Story number 2

Everyone knows such sports discipline as bench shooting or rifle shooting at a skeet. There was one problem in organizing competitions and shooting practice: collecting fragments of plates, fragments can fly apart over a large area and not always above the “clean field”.

Solving the problem, of course, invented a super-robot, which actually collected the fragments, but, firstly, it is a very expensive device, and secondly, it coped poorly with the task in the forests.

Someone clever (the story is silent about who it was) was asked to make plates of ice. These plates flew no worse than plastic ones, and there is no need to collect fragments, moreover, the plates themselves are cheaper.

End of story number 2

---

Take a look at your project again. Is there him that you really want to remove? What prevents it just to take and remove? What can be changed in this barrier?

findings

The conclusion from these two stories is simple: often when working on a project, so-called psychological inertia. We do it the way we did before, without paying attention to the changes around, we solve problems the way it is solved by everyone, and we accept the shortcomings of these decisions.

In fact, both of these examples illustrate one type of psychological inertia “Inertia of traditional conditions”, and there are 16 such types in total (!)

Well, the second conclusion: do not rush to buy / reinvent robots to solve your problems, try to connect the scientific research institutes first (not artificial intelligence).

PS If the article was useful for you and you applied it to your project. Or if you would like to learn about other types of psychological inertia. Write in the comments, with the interest and some usefulness of the article, I will continue to write on this topic.