The difference between expert and technician

I read a story and motivated me to think about the structure of kaizen project, share with you as below,

There are two hotels located in a famous beauty sport and they made a same curved slope in front of the gate to let the car moving near for their guests. In winter, most of the time, snow falled on the slope and melted to be a thin ice coating on the slope. It was dangerous the guests to walk on the slope and their guest are always slipped on there.

One of the hotel organized a kaizen team with many authority in building, service and proprieties. After a few days of brain-storming, the team made a solution by a infra-red detection system for temperature. When the temperature falls to a stated range, the salt water will spray on the slope to melt the ice in avoiding the guest slipping. It was a high-tech solution and it worked, but the hotel spent many ten thousand of RMB for that facility.

There was another hotel in 5 km far from that, and she has the same problem. The boss of that hotel shouted to the lobby manager, "If I see the guests slipped on the slope, you will be fired in no time!" The manager found a technician to fix that problem, the technician started to use a chisel to cut many light delves on the slope. The outlook of th slope has bot been damaged but the delves prevented the people slipping on it. The problem was also fixed and the manager gave 30 RMB to the technician. The technician went home happily.

Think about your kaizen team, ask youself what kind of members your want? Experts or technicians? Therefore, I formed the kaizen team with a mixed function. In my experiance, the worker or operators always gave us a in-expensive but feasible solution.

A "addition" is always gaving you a waste, A "subtraction" solution is always gaving you a real solution. That's is the lean concept.