Solution Finding

Some years ago, while working on Supply Chain innovations, I visited a Molex plant in Lincoln Nebraska. The purpose to study process implementation, became overshadowed  by fascination with a two story manufacturing facility. When molex decided to build an additional plant in Lincoln their plant management team drove the design ideas. The two stories allowed the movement of raw material is on the bottom level, manufacture and movement of finished goods on the upper level.

That alone is innovation, but they ran into a glitch. The raw components came on reels. They had trouble loading the leader from the reel, located on the bottom floor, to the manufacturing machine on the upper floor. While running the leader up to the top floor snags were happening and causing material loss. Not a good situation.

Someone had innovative idea. They connected 2 distinct yet divergent experiences. They would try a garage door opener. It has a sensor in case something is in the way of the door that could be set to varying degrees of sensitivity. Instead of running it horizontally they would run it vertically and even better -- the price -- a trip to Home Depot. It did the trick. They would load the leader and then the garage door opener would pull the line up to the top floor. If the leader caught anything the sensor would trigger and the leader would be sent back down.

This teams openess to new ideas enabled creative solutions. How open is your team to new ideas?