> On May 9, 2016, at 5:50 AM, Grimmund <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, May 7, 2016 at 8:36 PM, (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:
>
> Afterwards, they made a bunch of special slabs (steel? Concrete?)
> that could be more easily attached for floods and removed afterwards.
>
> About a dozen years later we had record floods again. But nobody
> remembered where the slabs were. It's thought that sometime in the
> interim, somebody who didn't know what they were sold them off as
> scrap. But nobody knows for sure.
>
>
> A.  Someone put them in a "safe place" and that individual was then reassigned.
>

I do that all the time to myself…no need for re-assignment :-) I have two sets of adapters for my pressure-washer drain cleaner because I put the originals in a ‘safe place’. Which of course I found approximately 2 hours after I opened and used the new set, when I went to put the new set in ’a safe place' 8-/

> B.  Someone applied 5S policies and scrapped them.
>
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5S_(methodology)
>
>

5S doesn’t really say ‘dispose of tools not used for N amount of time', just that they shouldn’t be in the regular floor working kit.

> Happened to us at work.  Someone went through and cleared out a bunch of low-use special tools and wiring harnesses.  Tossed them in the scrap dumpster or the trash.  Nobody noticed for 8 months that one of the things tossed was the 800 cr  engine diagnostic breakout cable, until we needed it for something…..

Document, document, document. “This cabinet contains all our special weird tools! Leave it alone!” Also “This is what this tool does!” on each one of them.

I’m guilty of this myself. I have a large metal spike rattling around my tools that I’ve bent in a very deliberate fashion, clearly used as either a prying or alignment tool for a very specific configuration.

I’m just damned if I can remember what it was for. I’ve not tossed it because, based on experience, a week after it’s irretrievably gone I’ll remember precisely what it’s for, by virtue of needing it to do that task.

or this , which is in my toolkit at work:<https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/e1yysSwMNh6o4xqh> which is a tool fabricated from a heavy paperclip. This is an “27-inch iMac LCD lifter” used when working on the logic board of one, continuing Apple’s long tradition of using paperclips as technical solutions.

At least I have a little tag on it saying what it is. It’s taken me nearly 60 years, but I is learning :-)

(I haven’t used a Mac with a floppy drive in, literally, 15 years, but I still have a bunch of straightened-out paperclips laying about to eject recalcitrant floppies.)

The obTrav is clear and obvious. Your engineering spaces will undoubtedly have a half dozen unidentifiable bits of gear that no one (yet) knows what they might do. Are the a source of spares? A test device? A kludge that was used to get things working until they were properly prepared? Or did a previous engineer keep it around because she thought it was ‘cool looking’, and it would surely come in handy someday…

Woe betide you when some fresh-faced recently minted engineer 5S’es the drive spaces on your 50-year old modified Type A because "We were drilled on keeping our spaces organized properly and none of these tools are listed in the factory manual!”

>
> Or the time we were clearing out space in a warehouse, and tossed a working C12 engine in the recycle dumpster, "because we needed the space".    $12kcr up in smoke.
>

Can I come root through your recycle dumpster? I promise to pay whatever you your scrap dealer does! ;-)

--
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs