You may have read in past articles that I assemble an ice rink in my backyard during the winter. A few years ago, we had a very cold winter but we didn’t have any snow. I decided to make my own. After researching, I found that snow can be made with a temperature of 30°F, combined with a relative humidity (is there un-relative humidity?) of less than 30%. The process simply requires pressurized water and compressed air. Since I had an old electric power-washer and an air compressor in the garage, I set out to make some snow. With some spare plumbing supplies on hand I thought I was in business.
After five separate trips to Home Depot, I found myself with a huge pile of specialized tools and equipment. Several days later, the testing of my snow gun was to commence since the temperature and relative humidity were in the right window. In order to avoid a single pile of snow, the assembly was mounted on a disassembled oscillating fan, with hose clamps and duct tape.
At about 9:00pm I fired it off.
The assembly worked perfectly all night, but rather than producing snow, it produced large piles of one inch ice cylinders. It looked cool but it wasn’t snow. The most interesting thing was that the mist from the machine had blown into a nearby tree and coated it with a thin layer of ice. It looked beautiful.
The next night, I decided to run the snow gun directly onto the trees. I thought it would be nice to wake up to a morning with shimmering ice coated trees. So, I pointed the assembly up into the trees and went to bed.
In the morning I awoke and rushed outside. Standing outside in my bathrobe, looking at the trees, I remembered that water is quite heavy. Frozen water is also quite heavy. All of the tree limbs were beautifully coated with ice and shimmering, as they were lying on the ground. The ice had built up on the tree limbs and had ripped them all from the trees during the night.
I put the snow making equipment in the garage. I spent the rest of day, cleaning up the tree limbs and rethinking the whole process.
Often times in life, the best laid plans don’t turn out the way you expect them to. You may try one thing and then try another but eventually have to rethink your process entirely.
At B2BGateway, we use January to rethink our processes. Much like putting the snow maker in the garage, each of our department managers meets with their entire staff and comes up with a list of things that we could do better. Throughout the year we are constantly evolving our processes, but in January we take the time to re-engineer them.
Our staff has a lot of great ideas for improving our processes, but we would welcome your suggestions as well. If you have any ideas that could improve the way that things are done at B2BGateway, please let us know.
Thanks and have a great new year!
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