We had the same sort of routine as this as factory workers in Japan so that we wouldn't forget to check/do soemthing. These explicit motions help you hit all the necessary components each time when working with hundreds of repetitions a day.
It was also doctrine for emergency procedures and anything at a heightened level of care as an engineer at a company (in hkmurakami's neck of the woods, at a company in a region where a certain large automobile manufacturer sets a lot of the engineering culture).
