Thinking Outside The Box

Subject: A Short Story about Engineers

Ya gotta love those engineers and consultants!
  
A toothpaste factory had a problem: they sometimes shipped empty boxes, without
the tube inside. This was due to the way the production line was set up, and
people with experience in designing production lines will tell you how difficult it is to have 

everything happen with timings so precise that every single unit coming out of it is perfect
100% of the time. 
 
Understanding how important that was, the CEO of the toothpaste factory got the
top people in the company together and they decided to start a new project, in
which they would hire an external engineering company to solve their empty boxes problem.
 
Six months (and $8 million) later they had a fantastic solution - on time and on
budget. They solved the problem by using high-tech precision scales that would
sound a bell and flash lights whenever a toothpaste box would weigh less than it
should. The line would stop, and someone had to walk over and yank the defective
box out of it, pressing another button when done to re-start the line.
 
A while later, the CEO decides to have a look at the project. No empty boxes ever
shipped out of the factory after the scales were put in place...very few customer
complaints, and they were gaining market share. "That's some money well spent!" he
says, before looking closely at the other statistics in the report.
 
It turns out the number of defects picked up by the scales was 0 after three weeks
of production use. It should've been picking up at least a dozen a day, so maybe
there was something wrong with the report. After some investigation, the engineers
come back saying the report was actually correct. The scales really weren't
picking up any defects, because all boxes that got to that point in the conveyor
belt were good.
 
Puzzled, the CEO travels down to the factory, and walks up to the part of the line
where the precision scales were installed. A few feet before the scale, there was
a $20 desk fan, blowing the empty boxes out of the belt and into a bin.
 
"Oh, that," says one of the workers - "one of the guys put it there 'cause he was
tired of walking over every time the bell rang".