Monday, January 30, 2012

Dumpster Diving, Designed-in Waste

You can learn a lot from a trash can.  It is the one place everyone agrees is the placeholder for waste. 

 

This morning, I pulled a large sheet of purchased material from a trash can.  We had punched a number of smaller parts from it.  There was a perfect stencil remaining, the outline of all the punched parts.

 

And, man, was there a lot of material left.  A quick set of measurements confirmed what my eye suggested…by moving the cutting pattern around, we could have had almost 20% more parts from this same sheet of material.

 

We designed in waste to this automated cutting pattern.  We have no one to blame but ourselves.  We planned the waste and executed the design perfectly.

 

Is there anything more painful than seeing such intentional waste? 

 

You can learn a lot from a trash can.

 

Keep on learning.

 

 

 

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