ملتقى طلاب وطالبات جامعة الملك فيصل,جامعة الدمام

One of the most memorable case studies on Japanese management was the case of the "empty soap box", which happened in one of Japan's biggest cosmetics companies.

The company received a complaint that a
consumer had bought a soap box that was empty. Immediately the
authorities isolated the problem to the assembly line, which
transported all the packaged boxes of soap to the delivery
department. For some reason, one soap box went through the assembly
line empty.

Management asked its engineers to solve the problem.
Post-haste, the engineers worked hard to devise an X-ray machine
with high-resolution monitors manned by two people to watch all
the soap boxes that passed through the line to make sure they were not
empty. No doubt, they worked hard and they worked fast but they
spent whoopee amount to do so.

But when a rank-and-file employee in a small company was posed
with the same problem, did not get into complications of X-rays, etc
but instead came out with another solution. He bought a strong
industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He
switched the fan on, and as each soap box passed the fan, it
simply blew the empty boxes out of the line.

Moral of the story:KISS (Keep It Simple,Stupid) i.e. always
look for simple solutions.that solves the problem.