An Unusual Occupation

[mbarker]

I'm not sure if you would run into this in America, but apparently in Japan, if you go to a canned goods factory, one of those places that does vacuum packed canned foods, down near the end of the conveyor belts, you'll find a person doing something rather strange. He or she will be standing at a spot where all of the cans go by, with a metal wand in his or her hand, fairly loosely held. The wand they showed us had a wide grip, maybe an inch wide with rounded edges. It tapered down to a round tip, like a large ball bearing stuck on the end of the wand.   He or she will be tapping each and every one of the stream of cans moving along the conveyor belt once or twice with that wand. Occasionally, he or she will tap one, then pick it up and set it aside. What are these people doing?  Well, it turns out that a can with a good vacuum makes a nice musical ting when it is tapped. Bad cans make more of a dull clunk. So they are doing a quality check, basically.  On the show I was watching, they showed us that in a quiet room, with the experts tapping, the difference between a good can and a bad can is actually fairly noticeable. Of course, the experts are doing this standing at a factory conveyor belt with all of the other noises of the factory around them.  Can you imagine putting can tapping on your resume?

Comments

[dialyn.livejournal.com]

I thought, perhaps, they were testing to see if the seal was secure and that the wand had a magnet that would lift up the lid if it wasn't. I realize that doesn't sound very efficient, but that was my first image before I got t the part where you explained what was going on. I'm sure I only thought of that because I save cans for my brother and he gave me a magnetized "wand" to help me separate the aluminum cans from the others. I bet there is a fancy title for the can tapping that would look better on a resume: "Quality Control Manager" or some such. I'm a little surprised there is such a human element to this....seems like corporations are so eager to replace everyone with robots that maybe can tapper would be automated?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Might be. Although the guy on the show was training a new person, so apparently they are still doing it at least in some places. They did remark that this is a traditional job -- they said Meiji, which is around the turn of the last century, 1900s? Poking around the web, apparently vacuum packing did start about then. Wow! That's a lot of can tapping.

[dialyn.livejournal.com]

Given human nature, I wonder if there is any temptation to tap out a beat. I suppose that would get you booted off the line.