A few weeks ago, I encountered an article in the Wall Street Journal about a new
invention that seeks to revolutionize the poultry industry, specifically the way
that chickens are “wrangled.”
Just to give you a little bit of background, the article states that currently,
about 95% of all chickens are herded manually. It’s a smelly, somewhat dangerous
(chickens scratch and peck, after all) and messy (due to something else that chickens
do quite often) job for the men and women doing the work. It can also be bad for
the birds too. A chicken’s attempt to evade her would-be captors can result
in bruised flesh and broken bones, resulting in financial losses for the poultry
companies and accusations of abuse from animal rights groups.
But that’s all about to change, thanks to a new invention dubbed the PH2000.
Author Scott Kilman describes how the device works: “Out of the gloom and
dust of a chicken house as long as a football field, a PH2000 emerged. Hundreds
of fluffy white birds tipped their heads and stared. The nine-ton, 42-foot-long
contraption crept closer, slowly sweeping a low metal ramp back and forth like
a giant scythe. The ramp gently nudged the birds in their chests. They lifted
their feet to get out of its way, only to find themselves standing on the ramp
itself. As more birds stepped on, they crowded one another toward a conveyor belt.
Whoosh! Each chicken was whisked up the belt into a small compartment, where a
burst of air pushed it into a metal chute. Within seconds, the bird came to a
rest, blinking, still on its feet inside a wire cage.”
Sounds almost genius, doesn’t it?
The reason that I mention all of this is that the PH2000 probably doesn’t
strike most people as being the most exciting innovation to come along. I doubt
that it will garner the kind of attention that the Space Shuttle, the Mars Pathfinder
or even Dean Kamen’s Segway Scooter received. (In other words, don't look
for it on the cover of TIME magazine anytime soon.) The large majority of people
will probably go about their daily lives without even knowing that the device
exists. Yet, in spite of this, the PH2000 is poised to revolutionize an entire
industry.
The article got me thinking about the nature of innovation. Sometimes, a new invention
is widely heralded as the “next big thing.” At others, you don’t
even know how innovative something is until years after the fact. That’s
certainly true for our industry. For every major innovation like quick color-change
powder coating booths or the electroless nickel process, there are dozens of hardly-even-noticed
innovations that have made every bit as much of an impact on our professional
lives.
In the months ahead, I encourage each of us to think about the
jobs we do, and the as-yet-unexplored possibilities that lie around
each corner. What are some aspects (great and small) of our jobs
that could benefit from a dose of innovation? How can we make that
masking job go a little more smoothly? How can we perform processes
faster without compromising product quality? Let’s work with
our suppliers — and one another — to explore new ways
for revolutionizing our industry.
