Plan the shop floor and the season on a whiteboard

Most shops have a whiteboard in the back. It holds the week's plan, a phone number, half a drawing of a new layout and a note that says "call Shimano rep" from two months ago. It is useful right up until someone wipes it, and then the plan is gone.

Canvas is the same idea on a screen. An infinite board with shapes, arrows, text and sticky notes that the whole team can edit at the same time, from the counter, from home, or from the laptop on the bench. Boards live in folders, so the layout plan from last winter is still there next winter.

Canvas is part of erp.io, in the same workspace as Service. It is where you think things through before they become tasks in Projects or templates in Service.

A shop floor layout decides how many bikes you can turn in a day. Where the drop-off area sits relative to the counter. How far a mechanic walks from the stand to the parts wall. Whether there is somewhere to park the bikes waiting on parts that is not in the way of the bikes that are ready. Where e-bikes charge, and whether that spot is away from the solvent tank.

Draw it on Canvas before you move anything. A rectangle for each stand, the truing station, the wash area, the parts wall, the counter and the customer area. Arrows for how a bike moves: in the door, tagged, on the rack, on a stand, washed, on the ready rack, out the door. Invite the mechanics as editors; they will spot the problem with the layout in about thirty seconds. Invite the shopfitter or landlord as a viewer.

When the layout is agreed, export it and pin the image in Chat so everyone knows where things are going, then turn the moving plan into tasks in Projects.

Canvas does not connect to Service, and it does not need to. It is a thinking tool. What you decide on a board shows up elsewhere: a new checklist template in Service after a retro about comebacks, a project in Projects for the layout change, a pinned image in Chat.

The post-season retro is where Canvas earns its keep. Use the retrospective template, with what went well, what we learned, what was missing and what we wished for. Everyone adds notes. The comebacks from rushed tune-ups in May, the week the bench ran out of 11-speed chains, the rider who waited three days on a derailleur hanger. Group them into themes and decide what changes.

Some of those changes land in Service today, like a tougher tune-up checklist with a required photo of the chain gauge. Others, like a work-order board that shows which bikes are waiting on parts, are on the Service roadmap. Canvas is where you write both down so neither gets lost.