We are now through three quarters of the year. We have made tremendous strides in all facets on the business and need to keep our focus through the rest of the year. Our quarterly performance audit now stands at 2-1 in favor of the Sueño Latino over the Los Banditos. The bottom shop has made tremendous strides the last two quarters, but there is still room for improvement.

I want this quarter for us to make a big push to getting all the areas of the shop organized.

The bottom shop has done an outstanding job with foot printing. All of their work stations are clearly marked with yellow paint, and you always see the truck bodies in their appropriate area. They have also done an outstanding job in cleaning up the area on the north side of the building when steel and aluminum moved to Building D. That area is beginning to back slide just a bit, so let’s make sure we maintain an area once we clean it.

The top shop has made tremendous improvement cleaning up the areas along the fence and right behind the shop. Unfortunately, their scores have not improved much since March because no additional clean up has occurred inside of the top shop. Both teams still have a real legitimate chance to win this contest. Below are some areas of focus that will allow you to improve your scores tremendously:

Organize all the tables in your area and shadow board all your tools. The top shop loses points because the only tables that are organized and tools that are shadow boarded are Roldan’s. His team completed this back in February, but not much has been done since then.

Make sure all you equipment has a permanent storage area. The bottom shop could improve if there were permanent, clearly marked and identified areas for storing their welding machines and ladders when they are not in use.

Keep your improvements up to date. For the top shop, the storage areas located outside near the fence have signs for trucks we have already shipped. This makes it look like we are not keeping up with our improvements.

Throw away what we don’t need. Especially in refurb, we appear to be saving everything off of the trucks we are working on. We should only save what we are going to put it back in the truck, or other things of value. Dan and Angus have the list of items we can resell. It is a very short list. Throw everything else out. Recently we have old equipment, some of which is leaking oil, lying on the ground. This has to stop.

If I could sum up all of this in one phrase it would be “there is a place for everything and everything is in its place”. Either team can win for the year. If you have any other ideas, ask me, Dan, or Tim. We will be glad to help. Good Luck.