Whether it is a beach, lake or river, sitting before the water is an unique experience. It calms you down. Engineers are also poets, except that they use materials and tools instead of words and pens.
The business of manufacturing is all about action, speed and efficiency. But to create value you also need to reflect, take a step back and look at the big picture.
Recently a large manufacturing plant, decided to integrate 100s of control systems spread wide across their plant on to a common platform. The idea is to collect all data from disparate sources and put them up on a large canvas in a central control room. Once you do this, you can take a step back from the hustle and bustle of day to day operations and see the inter-play between various processes and systems. You get to see new meanings from existing data. You see the big picture. It is like sitting before a vast expanse of water to get new insights.