Good lighting always helps.
Only having to handle the bike once is the ideal, i.e. get the repair ticket, get the bike out once, work on it until completed, and put it away. As opposed to: getting it out, finding that it was not assessed correctly at check-in, reassessing it, making a viable plan, leaving the customer a voicemail, creating a paper trail so other mechanics can pick up the ball if you're not there when the customer calls back, putting the bike away, re-filing the repair ticket, getting out the
next repair, then the customer calls back, and you have to pick up where you left off. This is unfortunately a bit too common where I work, and has dire effects on mechanics' productivity, not to mention their morale and the overall team ethic.
For some bike-assembly steps, a carefully-used cordless driver may help speed you up on tasks such as removing all the bottle-cage screws for greasing, and stem bolts so you can grease them and install the handlebar. I use a 1/4"-drive adapter in the cordless driver so the driver can drive hex-bit sockets, and have two rows of hex-bit sockets in angled holes in a piece of wood with a strip of wood strategically laid across the face. I can plug the driver into any of the sockets, or use the edge of the wood strip to strip the sockets off the driver
one-handed. One row is ball-ended bits, the other's straight-wall. You can see it bolted to the front face of this workbench:
I'm also a fan of flex-head ratchets because in the 90° position they can be used as a speeder for tasks like spinning out the crank bolts on a square-taper or Isis crank. I have three copies of my favorite 3/8"-drive one so I can have three of the most commonly-used sockets on hand (14mm, 15mm deep for driving crank pullers, 8mm hex)without having to switch sockets.
Maybe some more contributions later, I have to get my day going
I'll leave you with this one if you use a TS-2 and know a machinist:
Oh, and here's a design for a housing & cable spool holder I designed in trueSpace and built. All the pieces are either 15" or 32" (I used furring strip) and it can hold six "file boxes" of cables & housing of your choice. They'll dispense one-handed, or the file boxes can be lifted out if you need to do at-the-bike work:
