At Tegu we live by the principle of continuous improvement. Let me recount for you a recent experience we had applying this principle.

Meet the woodcutters.

Last month we set out to help our Honduran wood suppliers, known as “woodcutters”, improve their wood extraction process (i.e. getting a felled tree from the middle of the forest to the nearest road). Using the resources of friends and family, I coordinated the fabrication of a “wood extraction cart” or “Super Kart”, which the woodcutters could use to roll sawn logs of wood out of the forest. This new process would be theoretically more efficient and less damaging to the wood than the current process of dragging wood out of the forest along the ground. If our Super Kart worked, the woodcutters would be able to save costs by extracting the wood faster and suffering less quality fallout from dinged up planks of wood. Sounded good, right?

The Super Kart.

With an All-Start team assembled (see acknowledgements), fabrication was a breeze. Then our Chief Blockhead, Will, used his jumbled Spanish to get us past the curious Honduran customs agents; a second hurdle was crossed. We surpassed our third obstacle, re-assembly, at the edge of the forest where we met with our woodcutter colleagues.

Re-assembly? Check.

But eventually our quest hit a snag; or more specifically a MOUNTAIN. After roughly two minutes of grappling up the mountain we realized keeping ourselves on the mountain would be hard enough, let alone us AND our Super Kart. Hence our attempt at continuous improvement was left with a local farmer at the base of the mountain and we (the Tegu team) went about surviving the next 24 hours scaling up and down what seemed like a 45 degree pitch in midst of the Honduran heat and humidity.

Before (note the smiles).

After (less smiley).

Needless to say, we learned a lot about the terrain and challenges of extracting wood from the forest in a sustainable manner. Despite the Super Kart’s unfortunate outcome, we remain committed to improving the wood extraction process.

Acknowledgements: Many thanks to Tom Hellman, Andrew Menendez and Kevin Schultz for dedicating their time to get the Super Kart built. Also, thanks to Tom Gitter for lending his company’s resources to the project.