Doctors, Lawyers, Accoutants, and Engineers
Dear Mike:
This is my $0.01 worth.
Remember visiting your doctor, or lawyer, or accountant. The doctor's office is immaculate. The hospitals are clean. They even wear white coats there.
The same with a lawyer's office or an accountant's office. Ok, they don't wear white coats.
But, visit an engineer's office, and you will see clutter all over and may be trip when you enter! (Ok, some accountant and lawyer's office are also a mess, but they usually hide from view, not where they meet their clients.)
My point? There is a certain pride and work ethic involved that I often think is lacking in the engineering profession. While we pride ourselves (Ich bin engineer) with being highly "analytical", we miss the big picture. The big picture is the company's profitability that you are now talking about.
It starts from common sense concepts - like no clutter. Once you start here, with your own desk, and clean the clutter, you can start doing the same throughout the organization. That is what 9K2K and other lean, mean etc. are all about. The less the clutter, the less the effort to find something. This automatically lower mistakes, lowers costs, and so on. Enough said. Hope this helps.
Charmed
P. S. Please use labels! This is highly recommended. But, like Craig Cochran says in his article (See August 2004 articles), don't overdo it and label your stapler, or say this is the Xerox machine, and here's my telephone! Doesn't hurt, you never know, but not recommended. I am an immigrant and now a naturalized US citizen, and didn't know what Yellow Pages meant, when I first heard that term!