Imagination. More Important than Knowledge?

Einstein reputedly said “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

Long industry experience leads me to agree with him on this. Lots of very competent people are doing excellent work at all levels of the packaging industry. Some set themselves apart from the rest by their creative imagination and their ability to dream up fresh ideas. These are the people who really move their companies, the industry and the world forward.

I believe that a lot of people have the creative ability within them but do not use it as fully as they could. In some cases, encouragement and opportunity may be all that is required to make it come out. Others have the ability and find roadblocks preventing it from coming out. This may be reluctance on the part of the company to try something new or it may be lack of time and other resources. Still others may have been trained not to be creative. They may have come up with ideas only to be told implicitly or explicitly that it is not their job to come up with ideas. Do that to a person once or twice and they will get the message. You won’t be bothered much with fresh ideas any more.

Getting back to Einstein, it is the idea not the knowledge that is important. A person may have an idea to improve a machine or process but may not have either the technical skills or knowledge for implementing it. That does not matter. This is what engineers, mechanics, machinists and other technical people, in or out of the company are for. The person who thinks up a new sequence for a PLC does not need to be able to program it. The person who thinks up an improved machine or component does not need to know how to engineer or build it.

It is the idea that is the hard part. The execution is often easier.

In one packaging plant there was an ongoing daily discussion between quality and production about whether the label was correctly placed on the bottle. Placement seemed to depend mainly on the inspector’s eye. The maintenance manager came up with an idea that I have since shared with many other plants. He machined a plastic bar so that a labeled bottle would slip inside snugly but easily inside. He also machined a window that corresponded to the correct position of the label. Now the inspector or operator places the bottle in the gauge and if the label lines up, it is correct. If not, it needs adjustment and the amount and direction of adjustment required is easy to see. The inspector still verifies periodically but there is never a question about whether it is right or not.

In another plant setting the pouch length on a horizontal F-F-S machine required a mechanic to open the machine, loosen, reposition and retighten a cam on the machine mainshaft then reclose the machine. One mechanic realized that if the cam was 3” instead of ½” wide this adjustment could be eliminated. He did not know how to cut a cam but knew how to find a machinist who could.

Creativity will bring tremendous benefits to your company but management can foster or kill it.

Which are you doing in your company?

Imagination really is more important than knowledge.