Comment by LeifCarrotson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by LeifCarrotson | Hacker News Reader

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I've built a few assembly lines for automotive parts. These machines do one job, and probably only handle a couple part numbers: They might press a gear onto a motor shaft at one station, press on the plastic shroud at another, and add the grease and fasteners at the third station. These do have the operating instructions (Graphical, not English) laminated and displayed prominently above the machine. Someone with zero experience can walk up to the machine on their first day, rotate every couple hours to avoid task blindness, and assemble the parts. After lunch they'll be on a different line with new instructions.

But the bay pictured looks more like a mechanic's shop than an assembly line. You can't pull a car into a vehicle bay and refer to a big picture of "how to fix car" on the wall - the information is in dozens of 3-ring-binders, vehicle repair documentation, and on the computer. On that stand and for that jet engine, there's far too much information to put it on the wall.

Good info there -- but I think I wasn't clear, I was suggesting moving the ring binder onto a table/rack right by the work-space, using something like a music stand.

Seems like if the mechanic just had to turn around to access the ring-binder, instead of walking down a flight of stairs, the efficiency difference would be less.

Likely because the platform he is on is not static, and is likely a standard part for multiple technicians, and possible with more than one on it at a time. It looks like the engine is stationary, and the station moves to where he is needed. If that's the case, they could use some semi-specialized platforms for different uses, some with tables for manuals and parts, some without to accommodate more people at once. Then again, it's possible this worker needs a different set of tools an manuals for a different job a couple times a day, and having a bunch of work platforms might be less efficient in other ways than having a separate mobile tool/manual bench and work platform. That one isn't relocated on top of the other often might because it causes accidents when people change the loadout of the platform.

Or maybe it's as simple as them having determined in the past that making people move to shift tasks makes it less likely that they will attempt multiple at once from memory, and mess it up. Sometimes what looks like an inefficient process is actually serving another need you haven't considered, and is more efficient in the long run. Having technicians document each task as done and take a picture to confirm it might yield the same benefits, without the forced short-term inefficiency.

Or maybe they're exaggerating a minor issue to make the product look better like a late night infommercial.

> Or maybe they're exaggerating a minor issue to make the product look better like a late night infommercial.

Sure. I'm not trying to suggest it is an enhancement in the work process, just that it may be even considering the GP's sentiment of "Seems like if the mechanic just had to turn around to access the ring-binder, instead of walking down a flight of stairs, the efficiency difference would be less." by providing additional information that may not have been considered.

>Or maybe they're exaggerating a minor issue to make the product look better like a late night infommercial.

Most of those infomercial products are actually designed for the disabled. I don't bring that up just because it's a really important lesson (which I think it is), but it also has a parallel here. Minor issues for people in one situation may be huge encumbrances to someone else. What's more likely is products have their audience exaggerated and widened, but very often a real problem is being solved. It just may not be a problem all or even most of us have.

Or maybe you're minimizing a real issue due to anti-marketing bias.

You're totally overcomplicating this -- all they need is literally a music stand that they keep with their binders -- when you take a binder out, bring the stand with you to the platform and mount the binder on the stand on the platform, so that you don't have to go back and forth.

As an amateur musician...I don't think so. Big heavy binders fall off music stands easily. They get stuck on page turns. The music stand itself is either very top-heavy (for the professional ones in concert halls) or it's flimsy and won't hold a heavy binder (for the folding travel music stands). These are all the last qualities you want when working on an extremely expensive, precise piece of equipment.

One of the most useful smartwatch apps I got was a metronome app, simply because it's hands-free. I wouldn't spring for consumer Glass (simply because it was an order of magnitude more expensive than a smartwatch), but it's even more useful for musicians. Imagine never needing to do a page-turn again!

There isn't plenty of iPad apps for that?

The point is that you don't want to have anything on the music stand other than the music, because it has a tendency to fall off the music stand as soon as you turn the page. And if you could avoid having the music on the music stand as well, that'd be great, since then you don't need the page turns at all.

Smartwatch metronomes are also great in that they can tap you on the wrist instead of making an audible click. It's sometimes hard to hear the click if you're playing loud, and it limits their use to practice since you don't want anyone else hearing the click.

I feel like this comment missed the point of my original comment. By "music stand", I meant some device capable of holding the binder up. Consider instead a camera tripod with the top modified to hold a binder.

Even if I immediately accepted that a music stand would be sufficient for what might be a 20 lb technical manual, when placed on a platform that jostles and moves (as is visible in the video), that completely ignores the second half of what I noted.

I don't think it's overcomplicating an issue to look at a situation that appears to be sub-optimal and search for reasons why what appear to be simple solutions might not actually yield the benefits you would assume, because in real life, often they've been tried, and they don't. It could be Google is purposefully presenting an unrealistic scenario, or it could be that this large multi-billion dollar company hasn't bothered to optimize this integral process in this simple way, but when I see what appears to be an easily fixed problem in an unfamiliar area of expertise I prefer not to immediately assume everyone else that looked at the same scene wasn't capable of seeing what appears obvious to me.

Instead of a music stand, you could use a modified camera tripod or something -- I don't think that's too complicated. Anyways, point is a lightweight device capable of holding a 20LB binder isn't new technology -- you could probably buy some sort of off-the-shelf thingy for under $100 which would do it.

You're right -- you're not overcomplicating things so much as trying to give this video the benefit of the doubt. But it looks to me like the benefit of the glass is greatly exaggerated by having the binder with instructions be located off the platform. Obviously glass is a superior solution here, but not as much as presented IMO.

I think the question of where the binder is located is missing the forest for trees. Who wants a binder when you can have the information right in front of your eye? Especially when you've lugged binder #3 up there only to find it refers you to some spec in binder #2.

To be able to check the torque speck on a bolt while getting it started and tightening it up would be so nice.

Yes, the example video about the time going up and down the ladder is stupid - but I think tech like this has a huge future in shops and I'm sure a bunch of other work places.

Interesting thoughts, agree there's a lot of hidden complexity in optimizing work flows. Would love to see further discussion on this if you have any good sources.

Most of my experience comes from actually working closely with people to provide solutions for the in-house webapp I maintain for work. Many a time have I implemented what I thought was an definite enhancement only to find people weren't using it. After sitting down with people to find out exactly why, I would invariably learn a new facet of the problem that changed my understanding, and made the solution I implemented at best a trade of one problem for another problem of roughly equal or worse annoyance.

Rinse and repeat through a few different business areas in my career, and you can't help but learn a little humility and come to respect the power of truly understanding the problem space before embarking on a project of any magnitude. A powerful lesson, but unfortunately easy to forget.

That said, one of the replies to my comment (that subsequently deleted it) was a HN regular that said "Kaizen principles tell us that there are many optimisations that are known to the people doing the job, but not to the people who have the power to implement them." I wasn't familiar with the term, but I am familiar with what it refers to, and my bet is you'll find good information branches along that path.

My PPOE was selling tablet computers for vehicle diagnostics 20 years ago that automatically detected the type of car and displayed the correct information for it.

PPOE: Previous place of employment? Never seen that acronym before and mistook it for PPPoE at first.

So he needs an iPad? And it wouldn't obscure some of his field of vision.

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