The Fly in Process Control
An excerpt from The Wall Street Journal...ÿ
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Airports, the Dutch know, are all about flow control. Just visit the men's room.
The tile under the urinals in the Arrivals Building has that familiar lemony tinge; rubber soles stick to it.
Over in Amsterdam, however, the tile under Schiphol's urinals would pass inspection in a hospital operating room. But nobody notices. What everybody does notice is that each urinal has a fly in it. Look harder, and the fly turns out to be a black outline of a fly, etched into the porcelain.
"It improves the aim," says Aad Kieboom. "If a man sees a fly, he aims at it." Mr. Kieboom, an economist, directs Schiphol's own building expansion. His staff conducted fly-in-urinal trials and found that the etchings reduce spillage by 80%. The Dutch will transfer the technology to New York.
"We will put flies in the urinals -- yes," Jan Jansen says in a back office at the Arrivals Building. He is the new Dutch general manager, the boss as of noon today. "It gives a guy something to think about. That's the perfect example of process control."
His New York public-relations attendant titters. "Fine, laugh at me," Mr. Jansen says. "It works."
geocities.com |
