Albert Einstein famously pointed out that “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”. These are very wise words when properly applied. There’s certainly a time for organization and then there’s a time for allowing creativity to be foremost.
Today it seems as though we are often being forced to take one position-even if a position doesn’t apply fully to what works for us.
At CanTorque we enjoy being unique; therefore we are going to take both positions. Depending on how you see it-we aren’t taking a position at all.
The picture below is our prototype bench. It’s where we start to assemble our newest designs and typically where the first failures occur. Yes, we admit that we have failures. We constantly try to improve our products. When we come up with an idea we will go back and forth with engineering until we are ready to go past the computer and into reality. We put all of our theories through a multitude of tests including Function, Durability, Performance, ABUSE (this is an important one to try and understand how tools can be misused, what the resulting damage is and then to be able to educate to eliminate issues) and ease of implementation.
Currently we have 6 projects in various stages which means there’s a lot going on. Included here are sample/test components that we hope will eliminate certain issues or enhance tool performance, some things are waiting for fixes, and some are in the process of being disposed after upgrades. Chaos from the outside but really just a bunch of things happening at the same time.
The next picture is our service and repair area. It’s where we work on customer owned equipment as well as our own rental tools. In general, we work on one thing at a time until complete. We have to maintain order and organization otherwise we aren’t efficient and things can fall through the cracks.
At the end of every work day any open projects are documented, everything is put back onto the Work In Progress Shelf until the next work day and the benches are wiped clean.
