I’ve wondered many a time what is the fascination Taiwanese workers have with doing almost all manual work on the floor.
I’ve worked in many sectors of industry and always had an uphill battle trying to get workers to do tasks on the work surfaces and benches provided, instead of on the floor. We give workers clean benches, tool organizers, streamline the workflow etc etc, but it’s useless. Given any choice in the matter, they’re there squatting around the work on the floor again.
A couple of times we’ve been able to get limited success by providing only air tools to do assembly, and then limiting the length of the hoses so they would only reach the bench and not the floor. However, as soon as something unusual happens, a new tool or some new equipment arrives for example, it goes straight on the floor and the huddling starts all over again.
You’ll see the same thing at your local car dealer. There will be a clean room just for doing complete engine overhauls, but it will be stuffed with spare parts or junk, and the mechanics will instead be rebuilding engines on the (filthy) main shop floor…
Anyone have any insights into this behaviour?