The Shoelace Method; A Magic Came Out From The Shoelace Knot

If you  have wear a laced shoe ever, probably this won't be difficult for you to understand. Even if we wear shoes as a fashionable gear and also to protect our feet,  I guess most of you have never think on this beautiful lesson I thought from my shoelace knot. 

This brilliant thought also popped up when I was conducting a work up training for my people. As I was explaining with my previous article,  "The Concept of Time Reduction in Functioning Operations; Time Matters at Everything You Do",Time matters for everything we do. The time on the task or the chain of operations and process is the key element of enhancing the efficiency of work or jobs we do. 

I observed that, my crew was taking so much time on making their machines ready for the operation or making their gears ready to work. Then I look deeper in to the matter and I could find the problem of delaying their action even after they were highly trained on how to make ready their machines and gears. The problem is their securing arrangement for the gears and machines.  

I talk to the crew and took their feedback on the time they spent on the task. According to my findings, 90% of their time has taken for assembling and preparing their gears and only 10% of the time taken for switching on and making their machines ready for the operation. The switching on and priming up of machines is a general practice and my crew well known the procedure and they are good in do it within a minimum time, sometimes less than a minute. But what about the  assembling and unsecured time?

All of those machines and gears are highly expensive and they know it. So, my crew have well secured them with ropes and covers to protect them from external damages and ship's movement. That is how they were trained on the job. As they secure their machines and gears well, they took a long time to get them back in work station. 

Then I asked one of my crew to fall out with his shoe pair. Then I asked another one to tie his left shoelace to the best he can to avoid releasing it from any pull or push on the shoe. Also, I asked the guy to tie his right shoelace by himself in the same manner. Then I asked again him to remove his both shoes but, the guy was failed to remove his left shoe because it was tied well to his leg. But, he easily removed his right shoe because, it was tied by him. So, can you take out the lesson inside that story?

When we tie our shoelace, we tie it in out best to keep the shoe tied to the leg but, we put a knot which we can untie easily because, we know that we are going to remove the shoes anyway later. This is the magical lesson of the shoelace knot. We tie it to the best but, in way that we can easily untie it because we know that we have to remove the shoes later. 

I applied the same phenomenon on my crew. I told them that whenever they are securing and storing their items, do it to their best to protect their gears and machines but in a manner with which they can take them back easily. I asked everyone to come up with their own concept of securing and storing their stuffs and I practiced them on it. The result was amazing. I could save 90% of time they took on preparing their machines and gears with this new thinking. 

Most of the time, when we keep things in stores or yards, we concern only about the safety and the proper storing of the stuff but not about taking them back quickly without wasting time. So, you also can practice this shoelace method on you stores, department, ship or everywhere and save your unnecessary wasting time on preparation. 

Keep your opinions and arguments at the comment section.