1170. Academic knowledge and Analytical knowledge!!!

The theory based knowledge of concepts and theories acquired at college or university is the Academic Knowledge. This is the mere basics which every student is educated in the institution he is enrolled in. Apart from what is taught a few students try to analyse and use that theoretical knowledge to help them in their enterprise. Using the knowledge obtained academically for critical thinking to find solution to any kind of complications that one may encounter in life is Analytical Knowledge. With only Academic knowledge one can never approach a problem as the solution to it does not necessarily be notional. 

I remember in the movie “3 Idiots” Rancho Shamaldas Chanchad asking his professor, “Why a pencil was not used in spaceship?” It was to make us treat the sequence as a joke and laugh, but in reality Russians did use pencil while Americans were spending a lot of money to replace the fountain pen. Use of pencil turned out to be hazardous for the Russians as the graphite dust started to clog the critical electrical points in the space ship. It was also affecting the health of the astronauts. Only after a long research a scientist Paul C. Fisher invented the ballpoint pen using the thixotropic ink with a ball in the tip. As we write the ball in the tip rolled and the ink spread on to the paper. For any invention if necessity is the mother, analytical knowledge is the father.  

Another widely known story is about the soap company in Japan. Company used to regularly receive complaints that a few soap boxes in their consignment were empty. The manufactured aromatic soaps were delivered by a machine to small individual box and a set of six individual boxes were packed in a corrugated box. The machine delivering the soap to the individual box on some occasion failed to deliver due to time lag. Management asked its engineers to look into the problem. The engineers who could not rectify the time lag in the machine decided to solve the problem in a different approach. They used a high-tech precision scale that would measure the weight of each soap box. If any box weighed less than it normally should, there was a beep sound and flash light.

With a beep sound and a flash light the line would come to an abrupt halt. The supervisor had to walk over to the machine and retrieve the empty box out of the line, pressing another button to restart the unit. The effort was a success but they had to shell out lots of money as they had to install the high-tech precision scale in all its manufacturing units across the country. When the management was worried about the inventory cost, a young engineer had a simple solution he placed a heavy duty industrial fan across the conveyor line and switched it on, and as each soap box passed the fan, the gusty air from the fan simply blew the empty boxes out of the line.

There is always a simple way to solve a problem and an analytical mind is after it.