[coloncapitald]

The story doesn't suggest that that the CEO or management staff should have thought of a fan before. It suggests that they should have probably looked into the problem better which may have involved visiting the production line and asking the workers how they would fix the issue inexpensively. Then probably one of them would have come up with this solution, or may be an even better one.

I see people bringing up points like "What if the fan dies?" or "what if the weight of the boxes increases due to extra packaging?". IMHO, these arguments are invalid because of the same reason. Fan is not the solution.

[narsil]

It's possible the line workers would have never thought of this solution without having the inconvenience there to motivate them to. You could try to introduce a bonus to the worker who comes up with the most cost-effective and reliable idea though. It is probably very unlikely management staff would do that, since the engineering team has been "stretched thin" already and they didn't want to consult them.