<story><title>You can no longer just leave Syracuse airport [video]</title><url>http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nightly-news/53594630</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mdip</author><text>It sounds like the &amp;quot;main purpose&amp;quot; of this system is to create a one-way exit to prevent people from accessing the terminal without going through the security checkpoint (using the exit as an entrance). It&amp;#x27;s a problem that every airport has solved in one way or another by either posting security or using existing, novel, techniques. In an attempt to &amp;quot;improve&amp;quot; on the one-way exit idea, they&amp;#x27;ve created a user experience that is exceptionally foreign to anyone using it and also adds a one second jarring experience that gives the impression of being detained in a tall, glass, coffin.&lt;p&gt;At one of the major airports I used to travel through (DTW), exiting the terminal involved going through a slow-moving motorized revolving door. It was one way, and also included a brief instant where you could neither enter, nor leave, and could be &amp;quot;stopped&amp;quot; by airport security at that point should detaining you be necessary. Because it&amp;#x27;s a revolving door that works very similar to nearly every revolving door a person encounters (save for the motor and one-way nature), it doesn&amp;#x27;t have that same feel and certainly wouldn&amp;#x27;t warrant an NBC News segment.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d imagine this over-engineered solution to a solved problem also comes at a much steeper price tag.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tovmeod</author><text>This reminds of of a story I heard from a speaker about over-engineering:&lt;p&gt;A toothpaste company had a small rate of faults when producing the product, every couple of thousand tubes produces the machine would put an empty one on the production line, it would then be packaged and shipped, so every now and then a customer would complain he bought an empty toothpaste.&lt;p&gt;The company decided to fix that, hired a couple of consultants, and after a dozen of engineers looked into the problem for a couple of months and burned a couple of millions in research they came up with a brilliant solution.&lt;p&gt;before packaging the toothpaste, they added a very sensitive balance to the production line, every toothpaste would pass there, if the balance detected a difference in the expected wight it would pause the line, then a mechanical arm would push it out, go back to the resting place and continue the line.&lt;p&gt;After implementing the solution the managers waited a couple of months to see the results and compare numbers, to see how efficient the new solution was. It was amazing! 100%. not one complaint of empty tubes after the expensive solution was implemented. The board was so satisfied with the investment that they came to the production floor for a tour on the new QA perfect tool. But it was turned off.
They called the floor manager and asked what happened, they couldn&amp;#x27;t turn off that important piece of the production line, they could have all the complaints back.
The floor manager said he doesn&amp;#x27;t even remember how to turn it on, he said, I turned it off shortly after the put this thing here.&lt;p&gt;So how it is possible they have 0 complaints with if not because of the new tool?
The floor manager said it was slowing down production, every now and then it would completely stop the whole production line, so he turned it off and bought a fan, pointed out to the stop, the fan would be string enough to push any empty toothpaste case.</text></comment>
<story><title>You can no longer just leave Syracuse airport [video]</title><url>http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nightly-news/53594630</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mdip</author><text>It sounds like the &amp;quot;main purpose&amp;quot; of this system is to create a one-way exit to prevent people from accessing the terminal without going through the security checkpoint (using the exit as an entrance). It&amp;#x27;s a problem that every airport has solved in one way or another by either posting security or using existing, novel, techniques. In an attempt to &amp;quot;improve&amp;quot; on the one-way exit idea, they&amp;#x27;ve created a user experience that is exceptionally foreign to anyone using it and also adds a one second jarring experience that gives the impression of being detained in a tall, glass, coffin.&lt;p&gt;At one of the major airports I used to travel through (DTW), exiting the terminal involved going through a slow-moving motorized revolving door. It was one way, and also included a brief instant where you could neither enter, nor leave, and could be &amp;quot;stopped&amp;quot; by airport security at that point should detaining you be necessary. Because it&amp;#x27;s a revolving door that works very similar to nearly every revolving door a person encounters (save for the motor and one-way nature), it doesn&amp;#x27;t have that same feel and certainly wouldn&amp;#x27;t warrant an NBC News segment.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d imagine this over-engineered solution to a solved problem also comes at a much steeper price tag.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>AutoCorrect</author><text>not only that, they&amp;#x27;ve created a novel way to trap people inside a burning building.  This is a terrible idea.</text></comment>