Myself, Shawn from Atlas Machinery of Canada, and a few other dealers were recently invited by Festool USA to tour Tool Technic Systems and Festool World Wide's corporate headquarters, manufacturing facilities, factories, warehouses, offices, etc.  We had a wonderful time.  Between the wonderful tours of local sights and hospitality (delicious meals) provided by Festool to the just flat out awe inspiring and inspirational meet and greet of Festool employees, walk through's of manufacturing plants, break downs of mega warehouses, education pertaining to Festool's philosophy towards quality, precision, value, historical speeches covering Festool's roots, detailed run downs of the R &D process, lessons on lean manufacturing and warehousing, etc.... I could go on forever.

What we all love about the brand, that sometimes we aren't able to eloquently articulate well enough for our non-believer friends, colleagues or doubters, was really on full display.  It was something else.  I've never seen an organization carry such an undoubtedly top notch, no crap, give your best every second and aspire to be the world's best SPIRIT, that was on display here around every corner, within every nook, under every pencil, from the CFO to the gents working int he cafeteria.  It was really something else.

Some photos are below...  Shawn at Atlas has a TON more (I did not have a camera phone on this trip... darn Verizon and your global blackberry loaner phones) and will either be posting here in this thread or another.

Sean - that is really cool. That must have been a fun and spiritual trip.

 This is the Reception Area of the brand new TTS Cleantec Factory, I want one of those for my store!!

The Factory is very bright, skylights, huge windows, all solid timber framing, really clean

Ahhh the history of all Festool circ saws...

This is the first ever Festool Circ saw, notice the old Fein logo on the Motor (after that first saw Festool made the motors)

side view.... and the machine is a ......

History of the sander, may have forgot to mention we got a 10 minute lesson on each of the saws and sanders

Dangerous

Now that is a mortiser with a logo!

 Did I mention most of these tools STILL WORK!!

 Coming to a store near you... October 1st!!!

 The cleaning staff use Protool mini Vacs with stainless pickup kits

 This is a true Shop in Shop in Munich, over 1000sq ft, separate room off of a tool/building supply store, AMAZING

(no Munich was not part of the trip, Festool is near Stuttgart, I do that in my spare time in Europe, A TRUE FESNERD)

Notice the green pipe up top, this was a neat store, wall to wall, floor to ceiling, great staff too!

And look what we have here, what a nice little kit

 That is a wall/lock box of individual ZOBO forstner bits....

 What Festool Shop in Shop is complete without a wall of PROTOOL

Munich is a must.... be carefull of the Wheat Bier it is highly addictive in Germany, for some reason even more so in  the southern state of Bavaria!!

Thanks
Shawn
Hope You Enjoy!