Standardized Parts

Any discussion of American engineering and manufacturing genius includes Eli Whitney and Henry Ford. Both borrowed and applied the concept of interchangeable parts, Whitney to produce firearms and Ford to produce vehicles using the assembly line. In doing so they increased production, while lowering the cost of production. That led to easily repairable products that increased the practical lifetimes of their products. In short standardized parts benefited both producers and consumers.

After my holiday shopping experiences and cooking mishaps, it is time to standardize some things for the benefit of the American consumer. The first item they need to standardize is the card reader at the check out stands. Some customers swipe their cards backwards, other upside down, while others use the wrong side. The confusion is understandable, since every store has a different machine and procedure, and some stores with multiple area outlets do it differently in each store. Waiting in the checkout line, the person in front of you invariably asks which way to insert the card. Those lines could be considerably faster if every shopper did not have to ask, and every checker did not have to explain, the correct card orientation before inserting or swiping it.

The second required standardization is for caps on foods. For instance salad dressing, some bottles have a small squirt spout on the top and others have just the inch to inch and one-half opening on top. If you forget to check you might just end up with a cup of dressing instead of the tablespoon you had intended. Open one bottle of spice and it delivers a sprinkle. Open another brand and it opens in the pour mode. Spices must always have a sprinkle option first, so that people like me don’t pour a bottle of onion powder into the recipe that calls for a sprinkle.

Surely the producers can come up with a standardized way of doing things that would make it more convenient for the consumer and not just for the producer? Surely the corporate bean counters see the financial wisdom of not paying a group of people in their research and development departments to reinvent the wheel. And speaking of wheels, is it too much to ask automakers use the same size gas caps and radiator caps in all vehicles?