Have just watched an interesting short documentary on Discovery Channel. How to make stuff. This evenings stuff? A Swiss Army Knife.
Wow! This really amazed me. I can't believe how manual the process is for making a Swiss Army Knife.
They have machines to stamp out the blades and other associated tools you get on a knife, 20,000 per hour! But, this is then moved around the factory in metal boxes to the next machine, then poured into a tumbler to polish off the burrs, then carried to the heat treatment machine to harden them off, where they are laid out by hand to go through the furnace, then off to the polisher, again laid out by hand!
They wouldn't show us how they they sharpened the knives, but I'm sure there was a little army of Swiss Children all armed with little ceramic sharpening stones....
Finally the whole thing is assembled, yes, that's right. By hand. This lady is so skilled that she can put together 60+ components in 2 minutes. I'm very impressed.
So when you buy your next Swiss Army Knife, just think how many people have handled it. Almost, almost, hand crafted. But they don't seem expensive.
Have they heard of lean manufacturing?
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