That was my exact thought process was to have the 45 degree for that one time when nothing else works - that way I can bail myself out and not lose momentum. I feel like momentum loss in our space costs 2-3x what the proper tool costs to sustain the momentum, thus increasing profitability by stocking it.
Maybe it is just me?
That's very interesting. I really think
momentum is a concept that more management should understand in this way.
Or call it "flow". Or both.
In any complex, multidimensional, high-stakes work, interruptions cost a LOT of time and money. Lost or ineffective tools or recalcitrant fasteners are only one source of interruption, of course.
Others include pointless meetings and other corporate BS, phone calls, people interrupting with questions, noise, chatter from cow-orkers, etc.
Programmers suffer greatly from this problem; **** like crashing computers, cramped monitors (inadequate tools), meetings to explore what kind of bird you are, idiots wandering past to ramble at you while they sip coffee, random questions, etc. pretty much shatter the mental state needed for a productive workflow. Picking up the pieces and re-starting the mental juggling act again takes a fair bit of time and effort.
Same goes for assembling Porsche engines. It's not so much the time lost, it's often the effectiveness lost and potential for errors.
There's also the flip side -- there's only so many hours of this high-end work a human can sustainably perform in a day, so you have to work with that fact. IIRC, many software developers count it a lucky day indeed when they can achieve three hours of productive "flow" in a work day. The rest of the time, and sometimes all of it, is filled with lower-level work.
Assembling engines requires close, experienced attention at every stage, but there's also a lot of repetition and much of the work is also done on "autopilot", if you will, so I'm sure it's different.