Fastcap Kaizen Foam

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Kaizen foam is installed in one drawer of the standing desk:

(Could use a little organization work on top …)

Organizing tools this way gives you surprising density. Before, these tools pretty much covered the entire drawer as they were not laid out optimally.

This approach is part of the Lean Manufacturing approach.

Home Depot has reasonable prices and free shipping for one sheet.

Kaizen foam is built in layers, so it is easy to peel back whatever depth you need:

Cutting in the tools goes really quickly once you do a few. Here are a few videos that go over the process:

Kaizen Foam Quick Overview - Lean Manufacturing

Kaizen Foam

The Fastcap long nose marker is useful for marking the foam.

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So over the past few months, I’ve been adding stuff to my tool drawer that I regularly use. I still enjoy the process – trace tool/part with a long nose marker, cut out with knife, and peel out layers – the process is very quick and easy – only takes a minute or two to add a new tool. Really impressed with the tool density. When stuff is organized optimally, you can fit a lot of stuff in one drawer.

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The drawer is about full:

One of the neatest features of this type of organization is you instantly see when something is missing. This does two things:

1. when tools are borrowed, you can track them down before they get too far away and are lost
2. it encourages cleanup as you can instantly see what is not put away

I really need to do more of this …