Whether the glue factory wants to reduce waste or the assembly line is very manually intensive and could be automated or an algorithm needs to be implemented to run an auto-pilot -- there are a multitude of problems waiting to be solved with a disciplined problem solving approach. An engineering problem solving approach can be be applied to a wide range of problems.  Just about any process or problem can be represented by a "black box" on a sheet of paper with certain inputs and certain outputs. There are methods to optimize the outputs of the box without digging into the internal workings such as design for experiments and other Six Sigma type strategies.  Depending on the problem at hand, these approaches can be very effective at improving a process or solving a problem. Clearbox Solutions has extensive experience working with various problem solving approaches of this sort.

However, there are certain disadvantages to the approaches that keep the process as a black box without opening it up and understanding the inner workings of that black box.  It is often more difficult to open the doors of the black box and peak inside than it is to run an experiment that blindly varies the inputs.  Although, we do our best to list all of the inputs, when we are just looking at a black box, it is to easy to neglect critical inputs.  Even though we can do a well run experiment with the other variables that we remembered, we never get to the best solution since we neglected a critical input.  Opening up the black box allows us to more quickly find and identify the critical inputs.  

 The quickest path to a solution is changing the blackbox problem or process into a clearbox and understanding the details of what is going on inside.