Econtalk om misstaget potatischips

En av de produkter som skapades av misstag enligt länkar i nedanstående inlägg är potatischips, och där Econtalk så gott som alltid är fantastiskt så var avsnittet om just potatischips ett av mina absoluta favoriter hittills.

Ur transkriberingen av programmet (i vilket det för övrigt även nämns att Guinness uppfanns av misstag):

Really, it's a puff of air? How does it know which chip to blow off the line? That technology is unbelievable. It's 60 miles an hour. Between the time the photograph is taken and the chip is recognized as unacceptable, the puff of air has to blow the right chip. How much time is there? The line itself is no more than 15 or 20 yards long at that point, so right coming out the picture gets taken of where the chips fall on the belt; then it looks at it and knows where they are, so all you have to do is if you have a great effectively it says: blow air on grid A4. So, A4 gets the little puff of air. It has to be timed correctly. Like shooting a machine gun through a spinning propeller.

Och:

The bag actually gets made around the chips. That stops them from breaking. If our supply chain is working well you will have at most two people touching your bag of chips by the time it leaves the plant to the time it ends up in your store. And what are they doing? The first person, maybe if the robot arm isn't working perfectly they are actually lifting up the bags--and I showed you our technique for lifting that and putting it into a case. From that case it then makes it to our distribution center which then goes onto a truck which goes to a store. That case doesn't get opened by anyone other than our sales representative, who is trained how to open it and put it on a shelf in a way to make sure that breakage isn't occurring. That's why we have an army of folks and they are specialists in handling the product so it doesn't get broken. If we just left that to your local retailer they'd be just throwing bags up and breaking chips. They'd probably be a little less careful than you'd like, for your reputation.

Industriell produktion är ett häpnadsväckande fenomen, och såväl Russ Roberts som gästen Brendan O'Donohoe från Frito-Lay behandlar ämnet helt perfekt.