Hot take: I saw a regional airline's maintenance hangar in Boise and their tool crib was a total mess

Walked past their open bay last week and saw a torque wrench just sitting on the floor next to a bucket of fasteners. That kind of sloppy housekeeping is how you get FOD and miss steps. Does anyone else's shop have a hard rule about putting tools back right away?

2 comments

2 Comments

robin_wright2d ago

Have you ever considered that a super clean shop might just mean people are hiding problems instead of fixing them? Sometimes a wrench on the floor means a mechanic was in the middle of a real urgent fix... not that they're sloppy. That perfect tool crib you want can slow everything down when you need to move fast. I'd rather see a little mess and know the work is getting done right now.

baker.ben2d ago

That "wrench on the floor" thing is a real red flag in my book. I get the need for speed, but a five gallon bucket for loose tools and a shadow board for the common stuff costs almost nothing. It stops you from losing a socket in a wing root and killing half a day looking for it. A messy floor is a distracted mechanic, and that's how you skip a cotter pin.