Guest commentary Miles Free

As precision machinists, we work in a process-oriented manner to ensure quality. Our processes note customer requirements, critical and key features, industry standards and specifications to ensure conformity and the satisfaction of our customers through the targeted use of tools, machines, software, materials and media. We also follow clearly defined standards in tool design to ensure the expected performance for the respective application.

But there is nothing in all these standards about how to create joy. Satisfaction is defined and measurable – joy is not. Our processes reliably ensure quality, but how often do we get to reflect on the joy, the delight, not just the satisfaction that our work truly delivers?

On my last visit to HORN Tübingen, I was recognized for my many years of service and received
a WireStyle thread painting: an amazing three-dimensional rendering of my landscape photograph, made exclusively from nails and a string – without ink, without a hidden image. I was familiar with the technology and knew about the specially developed precision tools, but I was still deeply impressed by the result.

We are focussing on processes, tools, materials and products. That is right and necessary. But we should also think about the joy that comes from it: Cars that drive, aeroplanes that fly, people who are healed by precisely manufactured parts. In my case: the astonishment of seeing my photo transformed into a 3-dimensional realization of what I had seen.