[nerdponx]

That literally is the solution they landed on: they hired helpers, i.e. extra personnel.

The critical difference is that they did not need to hire more welders, buy more welding equipment, set up more welding stations.

I don't care if the story came right out of Aesop's fables, because it's a good story and it makes a good point.

[anenefan]

The problem is it's not really a good story to tell, because this leads people, who might not know any better, to later in life recount to some welder friend(s) they happen to know, about how the article's creator was the guy who worked out welders needed TAs ... or one fabrication welding business needed TAs. It's better not to make things up, or use really really incredulous examples, that may lead people to unwittingly embarrass themselves.

It's almost like a story where the genius works out the boss needs a secretary.

When it comes to inventing stuff, important points are often overlooked.

Imagine if the same sort of story recounted a company with a 9 to 5 office where 100 people worked solely at their desktop computer station back in the days of W98 or XP doing whatever it was they did. The guy observes when people arrive for work they're not productive because the first five minutes their system was booting and virus checking. There's over 8 hours of lost production so it's worthwhile to hire an additional low paid casual worker for minimum award, with the minimum required hours for casual (here it's iirc it's been around four hours a day,) to arrive a couple hours beforehand to ensure all systems are running so workers can start working immediately when they walk through the door. Clearly that sounds right, but most here would know, in practice, for many workers, output would not increase substantially. The nuance is in the finer details.