How much does you team have its $*#t together?

[Jersey Tom]

Curious. It bug the hell out of anyone else when people leave tools laying around, or parts strewn all over, or just throw wrenches and sockets in random tool box drawers?

Are teams generally pretty good at this? What is the assclown percentage on your team? Or assclown index, if you prefer that nomenclature.

[JerryLH3]

Assclown index, hmmm. We probably all do it on occasion, but we're generally pretty good at keeping things clean and tools put away. Every now and then, things do start to pile up and we need to take an hour or two to clean up.

The worst was before the car left for Detroit. The car left on Monday, and my flight didn't leave until Wednesday. I spent a few hours just cleaning up. There were probably hundreds of zip ties strewn all over the floor, tools all over the place, empty food wrappers and drink cups. I filled up two garbage cans pretty quickly. Those days the assclown index was about a 10 (if we're on a 10 point scale).

[JP Venturi]

The assclown index is a very good indicator, but much more effective is the individual homicidal rage to clutter ratio.

See, if you have that one person that just totally self destructs when a random wrench is left out, and people are afraid for their lives, that's when you have a sick shop. Works well when said person is old, has a sick crusty old beard, and has had many many surgeries from a life time of alcohol, tobacco, and various toxic welding fumes.

This year our IHR:C ratio was infinity. lol

You'd be surprised how much a few labels on the front of your tool box will do towards curbing random replacement. The most important part is getting people to understand how important a clean shop is. No leaving until tools are all put away, sweeping regularly, even making sure people use the tools correctly. What we had the worst of were random bins of bolts and nuts everwhere. Not next year!

[Bill Kunst]

Tom,
You have touched a topic dear to my heart. I am a high school automotive teacher. During the school year, while helping one kid with my head under the hood, I can usually give stellar directions to individual tools within the shop. If the students cant find it, someone is using it, it wasn't replaced, or they didn't look where I told them.

The second possibility always pisses me off. When I was at UW-Platteville, our formula team was pretty meticulous compared to assclown snowmobile team members. They, at one point, had two complete sleds apart covering the entire shop.

This will always be a problem until one of two things, they give a shit, or its there stuff.

Bill

[Jersey Tom]

My favorite is..

"Hey do you know where ___ tool is?"
"..have you checked the floor over there?"
"Oh! There it is. Thanks"

Works way too often.


What we had the worst of were random bins of bolts and nuts everwhere.

Ohhhh man. We had a 'bolt bin' for many years. A half split big tupperware-ish bin of random bolts, nuts, rod ends, and god knows what else. Wouldnt be surprised if Jimmy Hoffa was at the bottom of it. A couple of us finally got sick of it and heaved it in the dumpster.

[JP Venturi]

For us it's the baja team that makes the most mess. I do believe that every year they buy new wrenches, ratchet sets, various screw drivers, etc...

The best way to get people to put stuff away is to just make sure they do it from day 1. If people know that you get totally pissed when wrenches are all over the place they make an effort to fix it, lol.

[Andy K]

ah yes... the Baja team with all their crap, and the shop neat freak/tool nazi. Those were the days.

As JP has said, the key is freaking out from Day 1 AND doing so for at least the first few months until the rookies get the message. It all pays off the following year when the ex-rookies are the ones freaking out on the newbies.

[Kevin Hayward]

Jersey,

I definitely started in FSAE as a very messy workshop person. By the time I finished I was happy to be doing a regular cleanup in the morning before starting any real work. Alhtough usually with a heck of a lot of bad words said about messy team members. I was lucky enough to be taught quite a lot about being in a workshop environment from Lachlan Tomlin, who was part of the startup group of people.

At the end of the day people using tools is a good thing. It takes time and a fair amount of work with others before people realise they are not the only people that need the 5mm allen key. I think the best solution is being a good example.

Kev

p.s I think the only thing worse than scattered tools allover the place is heaps of little bits of prepreg CF bonded to floors

[Jersey Tom]

I could live with that.. considering we have no access or storage available for prepreg.

[Kevin Hayward]

Our prepreg storage was a cheap second-hand freezer (not a cool room). All the Prepreg comes from outside Western Australia, which means a long way away. We didn't always get what we want, rather what we could get cheap or supplied for free. I would say if you wanted to you could find both a supply and a way to store it.

Kev

[Wes Johnson]

We are generally pretty good unless we are in a serious crunch time mode. We do have one guy around here that we refer to as 'CNC Devin'. He's a genius on a mill but unfortunately his clean routine is always throwing error codes...

[ScottW]

For us it's the baja team that makes the most mess. I do believe that every year they buy new wrenches, ratchet sets, various screw drivers, etc...

Ditto that one.