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I believe we get exposed to challenges to our ethics on a daily basis. Most of the time; we ignore these challenges but occasionally the price is high and we succumb ever so slightly (and silently).

In the nutshell – ethics is about - as the National Society of Professional Engineers indicates: Engineers, in the fulfilment of their professional duties shall hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public. This applies to all engineering professionals – no matter whether you are an apprentice electrician or Chief Engineer at NASA.

It is thus worthwhile recalling the life of Roger Mark Boisjoly (who died recently on the 6 Jan.’12). He was an engineer at Morton Thiokol, the manufacturer of the solid rocket boosters for the NASA space shuttle program. While examining, discarded booster rockets from the previous launch, he noticed that the O-ring seals in the rockets had been burned through. He concluded that flight operations in cold weather caused the O-rings to harden and contract, losing their seal and thus opening the door to catastrophic failure. Inevitably, before the next Challenger space shuttle blast-off, temperatures were close to freezing and Boisjoly was alarmed.

The evening before the launch, Boisjoly, urged that the launch be postponed. NASA decided to proceed any way despite objections from Boisjoly. Shortly after lift-off, the O-rings failed and Challenger exploded with numerous deaths. Something that will remain searing on my (and I am sure many of your) memories was the horrible sight of Challenger, an engineering icon, exploding so catastrophically.

The feeling was that the engineers were outranked by the managers who overrode their concerns and ethics were trampled underfoot. 

The American Society of Civil Engineers reminds us (in a nutshell) to:

• Make the safety, health and welfare of our fellow citizens the highest priority
• Only work in areas in which we are competent
• Be truthful and objective in all our communications
• Adhere to the highest professional standards and avoid conflicts of interest
• Build outstanding professional reputations around real accomplishments and be fair and considerate in dealings with others
• Have zero tolerance for bribery, fraud and corruption and uphold the highest standards of engineering
• Continue enhancing one’s skills in a life long learning process and freely mentor others.

Thanks to the IEEE for an interesting article and Wikipedia for background reading.

You definitely don’t want to do as Darby Conley cynically suggests:

‘Ethics are so annoying. I avoid them on principle’.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

I am sometimes inclined to agree with Thoreau who noted that ‘most people live lives of quiet desperation’ - people who are unhappy personally and in their careers. As far as the engineering or technology field is concerned - for some of us, it is working in technology-intensive environments (design/installation/configuration), but for others, it involves working in maintenance and operations, a less intensive environment.

Great Personal Wealth
And occasionally - for some there is great wealth and the directing of large companies. The ‘good life’ is very personal and differs for each of us. Our jobs, however, are vital in achieving life satisfaction as they consume huge chunks of our days. I am sure many of you have dwelt on the various alternate activities you could engage in during your work days? I know the answer for many of us would be to take an extended break from the hum-drum and relentlessness (and inherent stress) of our work days.

Why not Retire?
Perhaps even retire and go fishing, or travel, or……... But I really doubt that deep down this is the solution. If you are unhappy with your current job, you do have the capability to change to something better - design the career you really desire (and indeed deserve). I believe, however, that we engineers and technicians achieve some fundamental satisfaction from our jobs as we are generally making or fixing something which leads to tangible benefits for the community. Indeed, we tend not to be involved in ripping people off with interesting financial feats (as with the ‘smokes and mirrors’ financier brigade) or becoming embroiled in legal shenanigans, as do lawyers, or bracing ourselves against the boredom of doctoring - seeing the thousandth patient with flu and sagely remarking: ‘this bug is going around at the moment’.

Inspirational Technologist
Some time back, I met this inspirational technologist – John - someone absolutely passionate about his job. He showed me around his paper mill with great pride. He started off, many years ago, as an electrician; but by dint of enthusiasm, a thirst for knowledge and panache for up-skilling himself he is now in charge of the entire data communications network for this massive plant and a team of highly qualified professionals. It underpins the state of the art Distributed Control System (DCS) with fieldbus, fiber optic and high speed industrial Ethernet networks – engineering at a world class level. He was a key player in drawing up the detailed specifications for the DCS upgrade for the plant when he worked with and directed engineers throughout the world. He has an enormously detailed knowledge of the latest technologies.

How did he Gain Career Success?
How did he gain this knowledge and get to this highly specialized technical position - bearing in mind that he was originally an electrician wielding a screwdriver and multimeter?

• Through some training - yes, I am obliged to add this
• Perhaps more powerfully, by draining experts of their know-how when they visited his site
• Regularly consulting the experts in the industry (when I visited him he was talking to one of the top engineering networking specialists in the country)
• Studying the various approaches and standards in detail (with a little flourish he showed me the thumbed standards of the latest and varied communication protocols he often refers to)

This all took him years to achieve, but as his plant managers saw how effective he was on-site, they were only too delighted to provide him with whatever tools he required. He is now absolutely crucial to the running of the plant, but despite this possession of enormously strategic information he has recorded everything meticulously and professionally for anyone to refer to. Furthermore, he delights in training others and his passion in this field makes him an inspirational technologist and teacher.

Probably old news for you, but reminders:

• Pause for a second and write down what you truly want to do in your career (and personal life) and then work out how to get there (make these realistic and achievable goals)
• Design your job so that it fits you – ‘A Designer Job’ - and work out the skills you will need
• Find some relevant training / education - if this is required to give you the background • Edge yourself into this environment by; reading, talking, appointing a mentor and getting experts to pass on their knowledge to you
• Work towards getting rid of the tasks that are hum drum and take on more challenging and interesting work
• Be useful, competent and enthusiastic to ensure you are fairly renumerated
• Maintain and update your skills – they are the same as those finely crafted pieces of furniture you make on the lathe – they date

Above all, ensure you are clear about your intended direction in your career. As Yogi Berra noted: ‘If you don't know where you are going; you'll end up some place else’.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Many of us get well rewarded for solving problems. In fact; arguably that is one of the top paying tasks in engineering. A good example - in the field of aviation - is that of Captain ‘Sully’ Sullenberger who saved hundreds of lives by bringing a passenger airliner down safely into the Hudson River after both engines had catastrophically failed - probably involving seconds in his entire career, or Red Adair putting out horrendous oil fires, or the astronauts bringing Apollo 13 back safely to earth. At the end of the day, as engineers, I believe problems are our stock-in-trade.

For some reason, we are taught that engineering is all about design and coming up with a nice construction - there is very little mention or discussion based on problems, until they occur. Think of your course at college – most of it was set in a pure world of building things and designing software where few problems exist. This is a huge oversight in teaching engineering. Students can be absolutely sure that a mammoth number of (irritating) practical problems will confront them, as engineers, on a daily basis. In some respects - if we don’t have problems, we don’t have a job. Interestingly, our most popular short courses (for engineers or technicians) are the troubleshooting and problem solving ones.

Fred Nickols (‘Solution Engineering: Ten Tips for Beefing up your Problem Solving Toolbox’) gives some really excellent (although perhaps rather dry) tips on a great sequence for problem solving which I have modified to my childlike (yes!) way of thinking:

1. Focus on the desired solved state
Most of the time we contemplate the problem with horror and ignore what we want to achieve. With this mind set we focus on the problem and then move from problem state to problem state. A better approach is to visualise clearly what you see as the final solution and focus on this unerringly throughout the entire problem solving process.

2. Be clear about ALL your objectives
To clarify this it is worth asking:
What are we trying to achieve/preserve/avoid/eliminate?

3. Expand your definition of the problem
The acclaimed ‘define the problem’ is the most poorly understood and executed step in the process. And as you solve the problem, this definition changes. Do the following:
Locate the problem/Isolate it/Describe it precisely/Define it

4. Bounce around like Sherlock Holmes in solving the problem
The information you need is not in one structured pile, but in a heap of little bits scattered far and wide; both written down and in many people’s heads. And changing. Be Sherlock Holmes – the brilliant detective; find it all and bring it together.

5. Picture it
We are engineers after all and tend to be visual thinkers. Diagrams and schematics should be used as much as possible.

6. Don’t always fret about the cause
Causes can sometimes be fixed and should be investigated. But don’t waste valuable time and effort looking into a cause where it is not going to help you solve the problem.

7. Avoid disconnects
We go through this every day. Top management gives instructions on fixing a perceived problem. By the time it gets down to the electrician on the shop floor, the problem has disappeared and he is merely doing a useless job for which the reason no longer exists.

8. Know your own vision
We all have built in biases and approaches to doing things. Sometimes good and sometimes not so good. It is best to be ruthless about what they are and understand the overlap between our personal and the rational objective world out there when assessing the problem. Stand back and watch yourself solve a problem and try to understand your biases for next time. Use your strengths, but guard against your weaknesses.

9. Create your own system
You know your skills and expertise the best. Develop your own system of fixing a problem.

10. Sharpen your knife
Keep refining your knowledge and expertise and sharpening your problem solving abilities.

I believe in what the famous mathematician and scientist, Rene Descartes observed:

‘Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems.’

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

As I looked down our street and saw the rows of rubbish (or garbage) bins neatly parked with military precision waiting for them to be taken away, I wondered at the millions of other examples of rubbish throughout the world. I am also acutely aware of the massive increase in packaging used from groceries to plastic bottles for everything. In the old days (yes!); we used to use paper bags for groceries. I insist on carrying groceries and items from the local corner side shop (where possible) without any bags used (resulting in the inevitable casualties much to the irritation of my lovely wife). South Africa, due to the ferocious amount of rubbish flying about, interestingly enough banned plastic bags many years ago (and I am sure there are some unpleasant unexpected consequences as a result; but it is seemingly a great idea) and you have to pay extra for the bag at the checkout till resulting in people re-using their bags. Good on them.

Is recycling worth the effort?
Does it have any relevance to me as an engineer? Where is all the waste going? Apparently some of it is going into some gigantic tip in China? I clearly remember as a child hearing the phrase: "Where there's muck, there's brass" (normally said in a broad Yorkshire accent). Unfortunately this is not always true and our consumer society drives frenzied growth and with it more rubbish. There are no widespread financial incentives for all of us to cut back on waste. So most of the stuff is buried. And we are fast running out of space in the highly populated countries. And there is the additional hazard of toxic waste leaching into our water table. Often many years later, the rubbish dump is converted into another housing estate with all sorts of interesting results with poisons appearing in one’s backgarden. The other option, burning or incinerating (which I initially thought was an ingenious idea), sadly has other risks. Cancer producing dioxins are a possible product. So the final practical option is recycling.

The numbers are daunting.

Since 1960, the amount of municipal waste being collected in America has tripled reaching (not, that this means much to all us numbed by these statistics) 245m tonnes in 2005. In Europe, it is now 577kg per person per annum. America recycles 10% of its municipal waste against Austria and Netherlands which are at a wonderful 60%. Is recycling worth it on environmental grounds? According to credible research at the Technical University of Denmark, it is definitely better for the environment. It conserves natural resources, reduces the amount of waste burnt or stuffed into dumps, and conserves energy. Recycling aluminium can reduce energy consumption by as much as 95% (against extracting it from raw ore). Steel is at a pleasant 60% saving.

Originally, kerbside collection programmes required separate collection of paper, glass and cans. But now it is single stream. I was naturally suspicious when I saw this happening, thinking that the authorities had given up and everything was being dumped again. But new technologies can sort without human intervention and it is more convenient for consumers. And it works.

And onto China. There are concerns about shipping recyclables to China - now the largest importer of rubbish (well, recyclable rubbish) in the world. Does this all end up in landfills? Van Beukering, a specialist economist in the area says:’as soon as somebody is paying for the material, you can bet it will be recycled’. So this is apparently not such a problem. It is being re-used. Admittedly, still significant problem with poor migrants being exposed to toxic waste in China. You only need to watch TV footage of kids lurching around on filthy waste dumps in third world countries; to know there is a fiendish problem here.

Finally, products have to be designed by us as engineers so that they can be recycled. A complete rethink of industrial processes. For example, sustainable packaging is not only good for the environment but cuts down your costs significantly. Walmart believes that in cutting the amount of packaging it uses by 5%, will save as much as $3.4 billion and reduce CO2 by more than half a million tonnes.

In conclusion, as engineering professionals, I challenge you to:

• Work out ways to minimise the junk we produce - recycling and re-using as much as possible
• Design products so that they can be recycled - this requires a rethink of our current design processes
• Boycott products which are poisonous and non-recyclable
• Design new technologies to process the garbage and make money from it
• Use the waste tips to generate energy
• Convince our peers to recycle, design for more sustainability and use less
• And be prepared to pay slightly more to stick to our principles of looking after our environment and ultimately ourselves. The jury is out as to whether the free enterprise capitalist system is that attuned to dealing with waste and pollution (well; at least that is what our economics lecturer remarked – thirty odd years ago). So we have to take it on ourselves as engineering professionals.

There is no doubt that recycling protects the environment by cutting down on energy, raw materials and pollution. But where we as engineers come in - we need to recycle better.

My gratitude to The Economist and the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) for assistance in this article.

As The Economist remarked: ‘Waste is really a design flaw’. And that is where we as engineers are both culpable and have a key role in fixing.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Many of us tolerate unbelievably bad ‘broadband’ in remote locations with so-called DSL. Very high speed fiber-to-the-kerb is only a dream. There is thus much animated discussion about the possibilities with the relatively new Long-Term Evolution (LTE) Wireless standard that is going to be the solution to all our problems. This particular standard promises download speeds of 100 Megabits/second and peak rates of up to 300Megabits/second. It is reckoned that this will challenge copper, coaxial and perhaps even optical fiber. Surely this means that that no telecommunications provider in their right mind is going to dig trenches and provide fiber any longer with this (wireless) elephant in the room.

What exactly is LTE - in a few words?
It comes from a 3G form of mobile telephony called GSM (Global System to Mobile Communications) although it is often (officially) referred to as a 4G technology. It uses two separate radio links – one for downloading from the cell tower and the other for uploading. The uplink tolerates a weak signal from the cell phones as it has gigantic antennas and powerful receivers.

So what exactly are the problems with Wireless systems such as LTE?
The problem is that the high throughput with wireless is only achievable with low congestion. Definitely not a problem for fiber optic which can achieve orders of magnitude greater throughputs because of the size of the physical pipe. When the number of wireless users in an area, exceed a tower’s capacity, the throughput drops off dramatically.

So, especially in densely populated areas, the available bandwidth while it is supposedly gigabits/second for a few users, rapidly reduces to a crawl, when the number of users exceeds the available slices of spectrum.

Finally, the cost per bit of wireless is dramatically more than copper or fiber. Well, for a typical installation (obviously not one remote user hundreds of kms away from the mobile tower). Some suggest, wireless is of the order of two orders of magnitude more expensive than landline.

So all in all – don’t discard the incredible possibilities offered by Fiber. Wireless is still a compromise. Naturally, if you don’t have a choice (you are located in a remote location, are a mobile user or don’t have any cable), you will have to live with wireless.

Note that FTTC (Fiber to the Corner) or FTTH (Fiber to the Home) has so much potential bandwidth that even a few fibers can easily give you huge bandwidth. Far more than LTE Wireless can ever hope for.
 
Thanks to the Economist for a tremendous set of articles on the topic.

Bear in mind in this rapidly developing area, as Donald R. Gannon remarks: Where facts are few, experts are many.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

I watch my 14yo son with some bemusement when he expertly uses Google to search for information for school projects or simply to find out about something that intrigues him. He is reluctant to use my favourite source of information – books. There is a massive paradigm shift that is occurring at present where people are using search engines from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to secure the knowledge, information and data they require by simply typing a request into a search engine. Know-how all available at your fingertips – or fingertip knowledge.

Elliot Masie, a learning futurist, indicated his astonishment after presenting to a group of 200 learning professionals. He asked them a simple question: ‘If tomorrow you needed to learn something new, what would be your first step?’ He expected a range of typical responses including books, e-learning, classroom-based learning and asking a colleague. But more than 90% of those present indicated that they would simply do a Google search. This is a profound change from consulting your peers or locating the information in a book – either online or in a library.

Engineering professionals want information immediately - available at their fingertips. Most organizations do have information available, but most storage systems are hierarchical menu-based systems that require one to memorise key navigational paths or key steps. What makes search engines such as Google so incredibly powerful is their simplicity and ease of access. Whether at home, in an office or travelling through an airport, access to Google is easy. Furthermore, when searching, the engine facilitates even fairly loosely defined strings and some misspellings - there is a lot of ‘forgiveness, including typo’s and formats’ (Masie 2006).

Fingertip knowledge is also now diversifying. Knowledge is being secured using devices such as iPhones, iPads or smart phones.

However – with this deluge of information it is vital to use the information wisely.

So how can we improve our searching for know-how on the web?

• You need to learn the rules and tricks for searching to understand how you can effectively get information. For example, using quotations around key words will allow you to search for a fixed combination of terms. In Google, have a look at the advanced search facilities. These allow you to exclude words and do other nifty searches rather than the boring old searches we do on a daily basis.
• You have to learn the tips and tricks to identify good information from bad such as articles which are well written and are from reputable sources such as universities and companies with good track records.
• Ensure that that this ability to search quickly and effectively is available to you wherever you are. For work efficiency, the use of smartphones or iPads and quick access to notebook computers, whilst on site or travelling, is becoming essential for the busy engineering professional.
• You need to work out mechanisms to make your engineering knowledge within an organization easily accessible by your colleagues and even by yourself for later retrieval. For example, tags containing information such as the author, the key words describing the document and perhaps an expiry date (after which the information is no longer usable) should be created. This would allow any one else in the organization to search for the stored information using a Google type search. Be systematic about how you save details of web sites and information sources so that you can quickly go back to them without engaging in another arduous search from scratch.

In conclusion, Elliot Masie (2006) makes the point that ‘…we need to start to develop the ability to be very good at Fingertip Knowledge: both very good at finding resources and also very good at the critical thinking that goes to figure out: are they true, are they relevant, are they biased or unbiased?’

And remember when looking for that very hard-to-find item of information, Abraham Lincoln's comment: 'Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing'.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Yesterday I was slumped listening to a highly experienced engineer doing a rather mediocre presentation for motivating the development of a new product. He received a rather cool response although I know his product concept was excellent. He would have got far better results if he had followed some simple rules as far as presentations.

What was wrong?
The presentation which lacked lustre used a plethora of power points and words, often delivered in a monotone and all tightly compressed into an hour – slides were thrust out to the bemused audience in machine gun succession. And inevitably there was no interaction with the audience. The poor reviews were predictable.

A galvanizing speaker
On the other hand, however, one of the best speakers I have encountered was an engineer hailing from the Mid West of the good old US of A. He galvanized the audience with an excellent and humorous opening quote; he showed passion for his subject and then after presenting two slides, efficiently broke the 80 strong audience into small groups of five. Each group was given two short, four minute assignments to illustrate the points made. Each group had to write up its findings on flip charts during which time the presenter circulated, assisting the groups as they prepared their findings. The results were then displayed around the room.

The interaction was fearsome, the delegates, without exception, were talking vigorously with each other about the topic at hand. A small prize for the best group was also helpful in achieving a carnival atmosphere. There was the hum of real learning going on. The participants were following the ‘constructivist’ approach of learning - constructing their own knowledge and understanding of the topic.

People walking into the room at the end of the proceedings would have been surprised – the presenter was delivering the last part of his presentation, surrounded by the audience, from the middle of the room - using a remote microphone and controlling the slides remotely. And the room was festooned with at least 40 large sheets of paper summarizing each group’s findings. The reviews afterwards were outstanding.

A few suggestions for your next presentation:

• Interact with your audience from beginning to end
• “Sell” the topic to the audience – why it will be important to them
• Show everyone that you have passion for your subject
• Challenge the audience, with every slide you use, to come up with their own comments and understanding
• Give the delegates tasks to enable them to construct their own learning - perhaps in the form of small groups
• Make the delegates interact with each other

As far as a stimulating presentation is concerned; Dorothy Parker hit the nail on the head with: ‘The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity’.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Many of us work in manufacturing and probably wonder where this sector is headed. I am not an economist and I would be the last to confidently predict the future. But a few thoughts here.

As engineering professionals we are all acutely aware of how rapidly changing technology continues to shape how goods are manufactured. Probably, at an increasing rate, change in technology is even more profound with growing influences from previously ‘technology followers’ such as China and India; who are now actively involved in the global manufacturing scene.

What will happen to engineering professionals?
Machines, automation and artificial intelligence are increasingly replacing humans in the workforce. So what will happen to us in the engineering world?

A few objective trends are especially relevant to understanding what is happening here:

Productivity is zooming up
Productivity in manufacturing is increasing constantly throughout the world. For example, the productivity index has gone from nearly 60% in 1970 to almost 110 for 2010 (despite the so-called ‘Great Recession’).

The traditional economist’s view is that increasing productivity should drive down prices, increase product demand and lead to a new leap in employment in manufacturing. As has happened in the 1900s. Sadly, today this hasn’t been happening in many countries, especially in the western world; where manufacturing employment has been dramatically reducing (e.g. in the USA in 1970 it was almost 18m and is now under 12m in 2010).

Besides the obvious comment that jobs are moving to lower cost countries such as in Asia; it would also appear that what is happening is that automation (and robots) are replacing people. Not only in the USA, Europe and Australia but also especially in Asia. No more people problems in terms of unions and payroll taxes etc.

But demand for high level skills also zooms up
The statistics (e.g. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OECD) clearly show a leap in the percentage  employment of higher level skilled professionals such as science, computing, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in manufacturing. And a significant decline in lower skilled jobs.

But here is the kicker…..absolute employment in manufacturing is still down in the western world (including in STEM careers).

What should we do about this?
I honestly believe as engineering professionals we should still be enthused about the opportunities that this change provides us with. A few suggestions on dealing with the change in manufacturing:

• Manufacturing is a key attribute of every advanced economy around the world. We can’t live only on financial and entertainment services. Manufacturing is not necessarily only about making cars and heavy industry; but high technology items such as medical devices / precision manufacturing / instrumentation etc.
• Skilling and reskilling ourselves is critical in this environment. Not only through formal education and training but through informal means such as talking to and learning from our peers.
• Back winning companies in your engineering career. Stay with companies that are constantly innovating and improving their products.
• We need to actively encourage all engineering and science professionals to think entrepreneurially and to actively create their own high value products and services which they can sell on a global basis.

Thanks to the Economist and Nicholas Diakopoulos of the IEEE for an interesting article.

As the Real Life Preacher says about all this: 'This isn't good or bad. It's just the way of things. Nothing stays the same'.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

First of all – best wishes for the Christmas festive break. I hope 2012 is a fearsomely good year for you and the world economy starts to grow strongly again.

Whether you are a brickie, fitter or chief electronics design engineer you will have undoubtedly heard of ‘apps’. There is now a huge growth in demand for app writers. A skill and job that wasn’t around even five years ago. When ever one thinks of an app; one would think of flashy (mobile) games running on a smart phone. However, the app field has morphed into many areas such as serious business productivity applications and is of major interest to traditional businesses. An app is thus not simply about narrow games development but considerably more than this. Apps range from informational, marketing, productivity to engineering design. Initially for the Apple iPhone platform but increasingly now for the Android, Blackberry and Windows platforms ranging in hardware from phones, computers, and tablets. Even for Amazon’s Kindle. And they are really customised products catering for niche markets.

The field is still extraordinarily new so employment recruiters are unlikely to demand much experience.

Attributes for a successful app developer
Although this is a new and rapidly growing field, the age old skills common to all engineering career are still uppermost in the recruiters minds for engineering professionals wanting to get into this area. Typical skills that would make you a successful app developer include:

• Ability to adapt to the different products with a dizzying range of functionality required. Much of it being green fields
• Focus and passion on what you are doing. You need to be incredibly innovative, fired up and motivated
• Communication skills are essential to be able to communicate to the client what you are doing – and how you are tackling the various challenges
• Being a user of apps yourself so you can measure and understand what is happening in the marketplace
• Attention to detail is essential
• Ability to write lean code which is not memory hungry due to the limited mobile hardware on which an app runs
• An understanding of back-end servers and knowledge of security requirements
• Finally, you need to devote time to refining your knowledge and keeping up to date with the fast developments in the industry

How do you make yourself irresistible for an apps job?
The tools to create apps are freely available so anyone can upload an app to the iTunes or Android stores – so create your own app to show a would-be recruiter how motivated and capable you are.

Some further suggestions for you to consider:
Consider your products and services. Can you write an app (or project manage the writing of one) and put them on a mobile platform to enhance what you are currently doing?

Thanks to the Economist and John R. Platt of the IEEE for an entertaining article on apps development work.

With the rapid development in the field of computing apps, the following comment from Robert X. Cringely is vaguely amusing: ‘If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside’.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Many of us work in manufacturing and probably wonder where this sector is headed. I am not an economist and I would be the last to confidently predict the future. But a few thoughts here.

As engineering professionals we are all acutely aware of how rapidly changing technology continues to shape how goods are manufactured. Probably, at an increasing rate, change in technology is even more profound with growing influences from previously ‘technology followers’ such as China and India; who are now actively involved in the global manufacturing scene.

What will happen to engineering professionals?
Machines, automation and artificial intelligence are increasingly replacing humans in the workforce. So what will happen to us in the engineering world?

A few objective trends are especially relevant to understanding what is happening here:

Productivity is zooming up
Productivity in manufacturing is increasing constantly throughout the world. For example, the productivity index has gone from nearly 60% in 1970 to almost 110 for 2010 (despite the so-called ‘Great Recession’).

The traditional economist’s view is that increasing productivity should drive down prices, increase product demand and lead to a new leap in employment in manufacturing. As has happened in the 1900s. Sadly, today this hasn’t been happening in many countries, especially in the western world; where manufacturing employment has been dramatically reducing (e.g. in the USA in 1970 it was almost 18m and is now under 12m in 2010).

Besides the obvious comment that jobs are moving to lower cost countries such as in Asia; it would also appear that what is happening is that automation (and robots) are replacing people. Not only in the USA, Europe and Australia but also especially in Asia. No more people problems in terms of unions and payroll taxes etc.

But demand for high level skills also zooms up
The statistics (e.g. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OECD) clearly show a leap in the percentage  employment of higher level skilled professionals such as science, computing, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in manufacturing. And a significant decline in lower skilled jobs.

But here is the kicker…..absolute employment in manufacturing is still down in the western world (including in STEM careers).

What should we do about this?
I honestly believe as engineering professionals we should still be enthused about the opportunities that this change provides us with. A few suggestions on dealing with the change in manufacturing:

• Manufacturing is a key attribute of every advanced economy around the world. We can’t live only on financial and entertainment services. Manufacturing is not necessarily only about making cars and heavy industry; but high technology items such as medical devices / precision manufacturing / instrumentation etc.
• Skilling and reskilling ourselves is critical in this environment. Not only through formal education and training but through informal means such as talking to and learning from our peers.
• Back winning companies in your engineering career. Stay with companies that are constantly innovating and improving their products.
• We need to actively encourage all engineering and science professionals to think entrepreneurially and to actively create their own high value products and services which they can sell on a global basis.

Thanks to the Economist and Nicholas Diakopoulos of the IEEE for an interesting article.

As the Real Life Preacher says about all this: 'This isn't good or bad. It's just the way of things. Nothing stays the same'.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Jay Leno, the ubiquitous and entertaining but abrasive (?) talk-show host uses his ‘Big Dog Garage Team’ to maintain his fleet of very old cars and motorbikes. Recently his team had to fabricate a feedwater heater for his 1907 White Steamer. An innovative approach was done using a 3D scanner to create a detailed digital model of the part; this was then fed to a 3D printer which made an exact copy in plastic (over 30 odd hours) which was then machined from solid metal.

A Rapid Drop in price
This type of rapid prototyping technology has dropped dramatically in price over the past year or two. For example, an industrial 3D printer has fallen from $100k to less than $2k for use in a home environment (and there are kits available to build 3D printers for ~$500).

3D Printing
The 3D printing is done in an additive way. A modified ink jet printer deposits successive layers of material until the 3D object is built up. No wasteful scrap generated from the traditional approach of milling/grinding/boring and cutting. The material used is usually a thermoplastic ($30/pound) or polycarbonate. Metallic powders have been used as well.

One of the critical aspects is the 3D software and this can be done with a variety of packages ranging from the free-ware Google’s SketchUp or Blender. Alternatively Autodesk and Solidworks are available – but at a price. Autodesk have even released a zero-cost program called 123D Catch that can turn multiple photos of an object (at different angles) into a 3D printing file. It should be noted that the scanning process is still an imperfect process so some cleaning up is required.

The Revolution
Suggestions are that personal manufacturing is currently going through the same revolution the PC went through in the 1980’s. Based on the massive growth and enthusiasm in this area; this certainly seems true. This is where the engineering entrepreneurs can go berserk creating new ideas in their garage and then ‘building them’ almost immediately.

The uselessness and expensiveness of it all?
Obviously, there will be comments about the uselessness and expensiveness of this technology as to actual cost of each item created (compared to a mass produced item) and the real application to the every day person. But the same comments were made about personal computers in the seventies and eighties. And I can clearly see incredible opportunities for the engineering professional in prototyping and creating new parts which would have been enormously difficult, time consuming and expensive to produce in a factory.

When you hear about technologies such as 3-d printing, Arthur C. Clarke’s comment comes to mind: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Have you been working for a number of years as an engineering professional and have steadily moved into interdisciplinary practice? Where you examine the total system rather than simply one element of it. Further to this; are you proactive, demonstrate leadership & initiative, can communicate well, think laterally and outside the box and are solutions oriented? If so; perhaps you should consider that you are indeed a systems engineer. Or are rapidly on your way to becoming one.

The best career in engineering
Money magazine (from Platt) referred to Systems Engineering as the best career in the USA based on US stats data (2009) showing rapid growth of 45% (yes !) over the following five years and strong salary growth. This is meteoric compared to the more sluggish growth in electrical engineering, for example.

Complex Modern Systems
Increasingly complex modern (engineering) systems require a holistic view. Something not provided by the standard one-dimensional electrical/mechanical or electronics engineer for example. Systems Engineering connects all the different components of a system together. The classical example occurs in aerospace; where the systems engineering process investigates the customer’s needs and problems that need to be solved. The alternative approaches are then examined; the system is modelled and the various components are integrated. The optimum (prototype) system is then built and its performance assessed and further optimization examined.

Seven Tasks to Systems Engineering (referred to as SIMILAR)
The seven tasks to systems engineering include:

• State the problem.
• Investigate Alternatives
• Model the system
• Integrate the system
• Launch the system
• Assess performance
• Re-evaluate

How to become a Systems Engineer
The best way to become a systems engineer is to build up a broad interdisciplinary engineering background. Electrical / mechanical / software / mechatronics / control systems with a strong theoretical and practical background in each area. And then have a good understanding how the different systems interact with each to produce an optimum product. One has to be able to be able to work with multiple disciplines and show leadership to them. Thus communications is an essential part of the job. Tough decisions often have to be made – decisions which because they relate to the entire project – may not be understood (or indeed appreciated) by an individual discipline engineering professional.

Systems engineering would appear to be mainly in the aerospace and military spheres but it is across all fields of engineering ranging from car manufacturing, building plants & infrastructure, oil and gas, mining and transport and in many newer areas.  A great example of a growing field of systems engineering is the smart grid – dynamic, complex with many different disciplines involved in its creation coupled with a high degree of uncertainty and a great opportunity to optimise. 

Certainly true of systems engineering: The wisest mind has something yet to learn.
(George Santayana).

Thanks to the IEEE, John R. Platt for a great article on Systems Engineering and the systems engineering web site: http://www.sie.arizona.edu/sysengr/whatis/whatis.html

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Recently, there have been some rather twitchy concerns that the current high levels of unemployment in many countries such as the USA and Europe are here to stay. And there has been much discussion that the high levels of automation of tasks (from IT to industrial automation) are the main cause of the collapse in the need for as many workers as in the past.

The Luddites
This is often referred to as the Luddite Fallacy, where improving productivity would mean that we are all out of work today. Henry Ford supposedly disproved this in the 1920s, because he produced cars (the Model T Ford) with dramatically improved productivity and lower prices and paid his staff double the going rate. As a result he attracted the best toolmakers to Ford and improved his cars further. So in this case - great improvements in productivity, based on automation and innovation, resulted in falling prices of goods; resulting in increased demand and thus more workers to be hired.

The problem
But here is the problem. It has been observed that these massive increases in productivity (due to increasing levels of automation) have actually had no impact on the high levels of unemployment. This could be due to the fact that the massive jumps in automation, industrial networks, artificial intelligence are now making many jobs obsolete – far more than are being created. Forever. Routine work is not only being automated, but highly creative tasks as well. From Radiologists who could earn $300k p.a. reviewing cancer tumour slides and X-ray pictures; are now finding automated pattern recognition software can do the work better to workers who are finding that automated factories are doing much of the thinking and manual work. Both on the shopfloor and at the higher managerial levels.

However
My thought however is that we need to learn to work with machines and be innovative and creative about what we are doing. For example, Amazon and eBay have created employment for over 600,000 people dreaming up products for a massive consumer database. And it is probably more likely that these jobs in the USA and Europe that have disappeared have probably gone off to China and India where wages are lower.

So where are the great opportunities?
One of the challenges with today’s world is that most people do not have technical capabilities to take on the new (mainly technical) jobs that are appearing. And the major proportion of the 7 billion people on the earth do not have access to the great things we have and who want them now. Surely an enormous opportunity (truly an ocean of opportunity) for us engineering professionals to provide these goods and services?

Think of some of the massive gaps that need to be solved in Asia and Africa; especially:

• Clean water
• Electricity
• Telephones and the Internet
• Health care
• Good food
• Personal entertainment and hobbies
• Transport
• Education
• Banking

This of course means greater globalisation and the need to have superb engineering skills (and some entrepreneurial abilities) but we have the capability of attaining them. Obviously there are challenges in that many of the simpler jobs have been outsourced to the third world at a lower rate.  But surely in raising the productivity of the third world we are just demonstrating a greater global application of making a Model T Ford. Producing goods at a lower cost and higher quality. Anyone who wants to earn more or have more leisure needs to learn to think and work smarter. And education can help us here.

Education is a great opportunity
Other challenges which we have to grasp are ensuring colleges and universities produce graduates who have real leading edge skills aligned with industry. Not mumbo jumbo theoretical concepts of no use to man or beast. Further to this education, we need to encourage everyone to think like an entrepreneur and to harness those creative genes which we all have, so as to identify new opportunities.

Our Standards of Living (and work) can go up
With the lowering of costs for provision of services and goods; it means that our standards of living go up as well. This means more time for leisure and with our kids or on holidays etc.  And when we work; we should have a higher quality work environment and a more interesting job.  Inevitably, I don’t think there is any end in sight to what people need or want. From material to spiritual things.

In tackling this fast changing world with verve and vigour, remember the words of Anais Nin: ‘Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage’.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

I must confess that I was always faintly disparaging of motor sport as a ‘real’ sport but driving with forces of more than 4.5g, heart rates exceeding 180 beats per minute, dehydration an ongoing threat and gigantic leaps in blood pressure (~50%) must surely mean that as a rally driver you have to be superbly fit. Coupled with the ongoing threat to your life (remember these horrific crashes over the past few weeks) and the need to be utterly focussed on your driving and the variation between lap times of sometimes less than a tenth of a second. Hence the growth of technology providing an array of wireless-based instrumentation to track not only the car’s engine, suspension, but also the driver’s physical condition.

This instrumentation technology has been steadily migrating across all sports ranging from sailing, running, swimming, rugby, football, cycling and even the hallowed grounds of cricket. Particularly sophisticated systems are used in sailing to track rudder movements, wind speed, strain of sails and motion. The rules can be rather restrictive of allowing the crews to monitor their performance in real time; but can add significantly to the performance.

Instrumentation Galore
Instrumentation for sports(wo)men ranges from pulse monitors, blood pressure, surface temperature to tracking physical position. Measuring core body temperature accurately can still be tricky; as the optimal spot is still one’s rectum, which is not particularly practical for an athlete running a marathon.

Combine the sensors in a wearable shirt
The current breaking idea is to combine all these sensors into a wearable smart shirt which combines all the sensors (heart rate, blood oxygen level, respiration and temperature) from the individual. This data is then sent out via an encrypted wireless message (so that competing coaches can’t access this valuable information).

The ongoing challenge is to interpret this data effectively and to build up metrics of stamina, fatigue and look for areas where the sportswoman may be wasting her energy. Naturally, humans can’t be treated like machines and a soaring heart rate doesn’t mean that they won’t perform well. But the proper application of this technology may even detect life or health threatening states of an athlete in an extreme sport. And also help teams in improving their strategies with detailed data (what is the exact sequence of steps to score a goal).

Naturally, there will be those who feel that this technology will give an unfair advantage to the team with the superior technology and this is a consideration to be assessed.

Apply this technology to your field
So, my suggestion to you, good friends is to apply this new breaking technology in your areas of expertise. For example, monitoring one’s engineering team out on site working in a particularly hot environment in the Great Sandy Desert or deep underground or in freezing Artic-like conditions on an oil rig. Surely there is merit in applying this technology in the engineering workplace?

To those of you that are still somewhat doubtful about taking sport so seriously, may I quote Bill Shankly: Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I don't like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that.

Thanks to The Economist, Brian Kaplan, Adrian Cast and Mike Martin for some interesting comments on this great new field of engineering endeavour.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

The first patent was granted in Florence in 1421; a few years later King Henry VI of England granted the first modern patent for making coloured glass for cathedral windows.  And recently, one of the most sweeping changes to United States Patent Law was signed into law by Barack Obama on September 16th. But there are huge problems with patents – especially software ones, that as an engineering professional you need to be aware of.

A patent has three main requirements: that it is for a novel process or item and it is both useful and non-obvious. There has been wide interpretation about each of these three terms. The main reason for patents has been to promote innovation and to protect genuine inventors. This works by getting the inventor to make full disclosure of his idea; allowing others to see and benefit from it - either by working out a legal way around it or buying a licence to harness the idea. The inventor has 20 years in which to exploit the idea. This has generally worked well for centuries; especially well for pharmaceutical and chip manufacturing companies but has been increasingly jammed up in the software world. Thus prompting some debate about whether patents actually help or retard innovation.

Improvements to US Patent Law
The US patent law has now been changed from ‘first to invent’ to ‘first to file’; thus bringing US Law into line with the rest of the world. Costs have been reduced significantly by allowing inventors to challenge the validity of a patent at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO); rather than in court (where you would incur incurring millions – literally - in legal fees). And new inventors have reduced fees in their applications.

Madness in granting patents – especially software patents
We have all heard of the crazy patents granted over many years. Such as upgrading a computer’s software over the Internet.

Many so-called patent ‘troll’ companies have amassed patent portfolios simply to harass others into paying licence fees or being sued. Software is a particularly easy target for trolls, as each program incorporates thousands of sub-routines which can easily be challenged by the trolls with catch-all patents. Much of the chaos around software patents has been the lack of rigorous assessment by the government patent office as to whether it is both novel and non-obvious. Hence many software patents are at best trivial or tiny variations of long standing practice. These then lock away permission to this idea for 20 years.

Another problem with software patents is that they are probably too long. 20 years for a software-based product is horrendously long.  Software is properly looked after by copyright law which is probably more than adequate protection. It is also relatively easy to spot whether there is any infringement. On a pedantic note – remember that strictly speaking, it is not the software itself that is patentable, but the process or machine of which software is a (key) component.

How does this help you?

• Well; patents are considerably easier to get through now in the USA – especially for the ‘smaller guys’ – whether you are a sparkie, tech or design engineer
• Ensure that you are first past the post with a new idea and get it to the patent office quickly
• You can also use copyright law to protect your intellectual property
• And remember that patent law still needs some further development to make it more useful to us engineering types

An intriguing commentary about inventing by Charles F. Kettering: An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn't take his education too seriously.

Thanks to the Economist for some interesting reading.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

A few weeks ago, an al Qaeda operative sitting on his pick-up truck deep in Yemeni desert was taken out by a missile from an American drone. There has been a rapid escalation in the use of drones which are also referred to as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Typically with a support crew of almost 200 people to keep them flying, they each cost millions of dollars apiece and have a virtual pilot located up to ten thousand kms away operating at their controls and another officer reading the data pouring in from the sensors (including radar). These aircrafts can hang around aloft for up to 24 hours sending back full motion video to their controllers. It is virtually impossible to see these drones in the sky as they can view objects from kms away.

These drones are also referred to as the Predator or Reaper aircraft. Loaded with highly effective sensors, missiles and bombs, they regularly launch strikes particularly in the hard to patrol tribal areas in Afghanistan (and those which are littered with push-button volatile devices). Indeed any work which is ‘dull, dirty, dangerous, difficult or different’. There has been a huge increase in combat air patrols with UAVs with more hours being flown here than by their manned strike aircraft equivalents. The size ranges from large (wingspan up to 30m) to micro devices (the size of an insect).

There is naturally huge controversy over the next generation of drones being provided with artificial intelligence to provide a high level of autonomy.

I am sure at this point; there are a few of you dear readers who are shifting uneasily in your seat about another example of combat descending to another level of brutality. But surely we can use these drones for peacetime purposes as well….

Great opportunities for extending the peace
Drones can surely be used in considerably more areas than conflict with possibility for these versatile beasts in law enforcement, rescue missions, border patrols, environmental surveillance, traffic control and mining studies. I have even seen some stupendous aerial photography from a drone done of a surfer ‘riding’ down the crest of a gigantic wave. These aircrafts can stay up longer, operate in extremely inhospitable environments and eventually are expendable. Drones also automate much of the trivial work by taking off and landing automatically and getting to the target area without intervention of their (distant) pilots.

Some major technical weaknesses which have to be confronted
The technical weaknesses include the need for two-way satellite communications. If the link is lost, the distant pilot loses direct control, and a failsafe system has to be employed to sustain operation until communications is recovered. There would also be the problem of latency in responses between pilot and aircraft (presumably of the order of a second on some occasions). The other concern with this proliferation of unmanned drones is the likelihood of a rogue aircraft hitting a passenger aircraft. Without a shadow of doubt, the drug-cartels are using drones to fly their deadly cargoes in undetected and to work out ways to break the law.

And with the incredible leaps in the use of remote controlled software for these applications, I liked the ironic comment: Now about that computer bug that infected a fleet of drones.

What about your engineering work which is ‘dull, dirty, dangerous or different’?
Think about your engineeering applications for drones ranging from a few mms to metres in size. In the engineering world we have a ferocious number of applications for work which is:  ‘dull, dirty, dangerous, difficult or different’.

With this rapid growth in aircraft technology, Arthur C. Clarke’s comment is true: ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’

Thanks to The Economist, Romney Schield (and Channel 9’s 60 Minutes) for some interesting comments and references on this topic.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

I never realised how protracted and complex the litigation would be when I was approached by a contractor to support them as an expert witness in securing payment for a massive installation they had done for a so-called 'smart bridge'. The client felt the bridge wasn't smart enough (and was susceptible to undetectable dangerous conditions such as high winds).

Smart bridges (including other smart structures) are where all the different areas in engineering neatly converge – mechanical, electrical, electronics, instrumentation, chemical and civil engineering. Sensors in the structure identify potentially catastrophic structural problems and warn of incipient dangerous conditions. You may remember the spate of recent bridge failures. For example, the 8-lane steel truss-arch bridge across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed during the evening peak traffic flow time with 13 people killed and 145 injured. The central span suddenly gave way after the gusset plates connecting the steel beams suddenly fractured. The replacement bridge has strain and displacement gauges, accelerometers, potentiometers and corrosion sensors to detect corroded concrete and strained joints (costing less than 1% of the overall cost).

Building smart structures and bridges now represent a strongly growing business in engineering. The bridge spanning the Gulf of Corinth in Greece, has over 300 sensors alerting its operators to earthquakes and high winds so that it can safely be shut down.

Wireless is the way to go
The new generation of sensors are based around wireless and new energy efficient and innovative technologies. Such as cement-based sensing skins which can detect strain changes on structures. This gets round the problem with cracks appearing between sensors with problems which then get missed. Another clever strategy is to put sensors on vehicles that regularly cross bridges and monitor resultant changes.

The challenge is in the data
One of the challenges with sensors is the huge amount of data generated by these sensors and the need to efficiently mine the data to obtain trends and useful warnings well in advance.

How can you take advantage of this?
Tiny sensors – low cost, self powered and wireless-based are moving into everything we do. Take advantage of them in your next civil or mechanical engineering project to offer an additional service to your client on the health of the structure.

With the masses of money poised to be spent by national governments on our rusting and rotting infrastructure – roads; rail and bridges are poised to be flooded with sensors. And at a typical 1% cost for sensors (of a huge amount of money in building all this infrastructure); this discipline is going to be a busy area of engineering.

In terms of your next engineering project, do as Jack London remarked: 'You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.'

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

It happened in a flash, a few months ago. A colleague and I were vigorously debating some engineering issue in a little café on the sidewalk, and there was a commotion next to our table. He turned to refer to his laptop computer to and it was gone. Stolen and never to be retrieved. Actually, the computer itself was fairly worthless but the data on it – gathered laboriously over weeks on soil resistivity measurements - was very valuable and was gone forever. There was no one lurking behind us. No one scurrying away carrying a computer. Both thief and computer had disappeared. This reinforced an important point: Never lose actual contact with your belongings – esp. when their contents are worth more than the actual goods.

In public places (and not so public places); your phone, laptop, tablets and computing accessories are all fair call for the unscrupulous onlooker with devious intentions. Remember last year, how we all got a preview of the Apple iPhone4, when an Apple engineer had his prototype stolen in a bar (and more recently, an iPhone5 was stolen out of a bar also). As an aside, one can see a certain pattern here.

As engineering professionals, I believe we are very trusting and are often trekking in obscure strange places so are highly exposed.

A huge number are stolen
According to the FBI in the USA, a ferociously large number of over 600,000 laptops are stolen annually in the USA with only 3% ever recovered (and a further 26m pa – yes – mobile phones also ‘go missing’). Generally from airports, cars, and hotels; where you are operating in unfamiliar territory and are distracted. So the rule is to treat these assets like money and to hide them. Out of sight and out of the mind (of the would-be) thief.

Nothing is too small to steal. When working on a plant construction task with tight deadlines, I had an entire HV cable drum weighing tonnes stolen out of our yard late one night. So – also watch your large weighty suitcase containing your test gear.

Tracking software
With electronic gear (and phones and computers can be worth up to $800 or more); it is worthwhile considering use of some of the tracking software on the market (with varying degrees of usefulness and availability in different countries):

• Prey (open source and free) on Macs, Windows and Linux machines
• LoJack for Laptops ($25 pa) – installed on the computer and operates once a theft is reported – built into the BIOS – even operates when the hard disk is replaced
• LapTop Cop
• Hidden
• Find My iPhone
• Where’s my Droid

Fortunately, most thieves are opportunistic and are not tuned into doing detailed technical analysis of what is stored on your computer or phone; as these packages can presumably be disabled by a determined malicious IT-type.

Use the Cloud
Other suggestions are to try and use ‘the cloud’ rather than your PC to store valuable data. When I take a trip, I email scanned copies of my identifications to myself and this sits in ‘the cloud’ (that word again) in case the worse scenario comes to pass and these are stolen and I need to retrieve quick copies.

As thieves operate with incredible speed and dexterity; when travelling you have to demonstrate extreme vigilance and common sense.

Some amusing and not so amusing comments
An amusing suggestion, is that as most criminals are male; always carry a pinkish coloured laptop as this is unlikely to be attractive to a macho thief. And in a country like Israel or Afghanistan, you will find your unattended suitcase containing your computer won’t get stolen – but blown up by the police squad.

When protecting your assets, it is perhaps good to remember the old adage: ‘He that steals an egg, will steal an ox’.

Thanks to the Economist for some interesting reading.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

It is often refreshing to rip out old technology and replace it with a state of the art system when the bean counters (unwittingly, perhaps) sign off on a new project. As we know, it is often a frustratingly slow business interfacing new equipment to an existing system; so starting fresh is often an exhilarating prospect. However there is a significant amount of older automation equipment still around from the 1990’s (and indeed, even earlier when you look at some oil and gas and mining installations). Proprietary industrial networks started disappearing in the late nineties and now most are open and based around Ethernet.

A Strong Drive
However, there is an enormous drive today to tie data all the way from the instrument on the shopfloor to the company’s boardroom and business systems (maintained by the IT department). However, existing PLC systems, I/O, instruments, valves and drives from over two decades ago are often still chugging along happily and to simply replace these in the name of interconnectivity with a modern Ethernet network is not viable and would boost the costs of a project into the stratosphere.

IT versus Control Systems
There is still the age-old challenge of the IT guys working reluctantly with the control system group. The skills and know-how required to maintain an IT system (with ERP/email/Microsoft Office and database management) is often considerably different to that for working with SCADA systems, PLCs, drives and instruments. The plant electrician of today often has a Notebook computer in his toolkit and is becoming exceptionally skilled in IT issues. Much to the bemusement of our IT brethren; who often come from more rarified surrounds.

Legacy Systems Galore
These include older PLCs which interfaced to serial RS-232/Profibus/Modbus type networks plus a slew of proprietary networks such as Modbus Plus / Allen Bradley DH485 or DH+; but sadly didn’t have any direct interface to Ethernet at the time. Plus there are an enormous of proprietary control systems written in C and running on proprietary hardware with vendors that have long since disappeared.

Gateways Galore to the rescue
If you are looking to upgrade, a good strategy is to first approach your existing vendor for an upgrade path. Many of the blue chip vendors know that everyone needs to be able to upgrade and often have a variety of solutions to connect to older equipment. If the vendor doesn’t exist any longer or they don’t have a credible solution; there are numerous third-party proven solutions out there able to integrate between Ethernet, DeviceNet, EtherNet/IP, Profibus, ProfiNet, Modbus and Foundation Fieldbus et al - the list is seemingly endless. However, ensure that your proposed gateway solution actually does work consistently and has proven performance with data for the entire range of operation (hardware as well as protocol types).

Other approaches that can work
Some strategies that work are to carefully upgrade the existing PLC (e.g. a Rockwell SLC 5/03 with an SLC 5/05) which can then interface to Ethernet and thus to the SCADA system and to avoid disturbing your existing I/O and simply running your old program on a new processor. OPC can then be used to exchange data.

Another strategy is to capitalise on the low cost industrial wireless systems appearing on the market and to install wireless data acquisition nodes on the machine control and sensor panels (minimal wiring and effort). The robustness of industrial wireless means it can easily and dynamically handle the chaotic plant environment with tanks, conveyers, piping and other metal structures scattered at every conceivable place.

However
However, as noted in the previous section, before doing any massive re-engineering of your existing systems, check for whether there are no easily available gateways or interfaces currently available from the device to Ethernet and TCP/IP and whatever protocol you are using on top of this. Remember of course, that simply providing Ethernet and TCP/IP is only part of the story. You still need to define what protocol runs on top of TCP/IP (at the application layer of the good old OSI model).

Finally, ensure when you open up your previously proprietary network, that you are aware that you are now releasing data into a more public field (and exposing your system to the outside world) and need to be aware of network safety.

As painful as it often is, we need to constantly re-invent ourselves by creating new approaches; as Cecil DeMille remarked: Creativity is a drug I cannot live without.

Thanks to Don Hebert of ControlDesign and Automation.com for a series of interesting discussions.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Most of our planet comprises seawater and with a salt content of 3.5% this needs to be reduced to <0.05% (or less) to make it drinkable. Some of the older processes used distillation which requires about 10 kWh of energy per m3 of seawater. The seawater is heated up and the resulting water vapour is condensed into drinkable form.

The other popular approach is reverse osmosis with semi-permeable membranes which sieve out the sodium and chloride ions (constituents of salt) and only pass the fresh water through. The pressure to accomplish this ‘costs’ about 4 kWh per m3 of salt water; considerably less. Careful maintenance of the molecular screens is required here to prevent fouling from pollutants and sea creatures.

Another simple approach (remember the KISS principle) is solar desalination where the sun is used to heat a volume of water, which causes evaporation. The fresh water recovered drips into a collection system. The limitation here is that there is a theoretical maximum amount of water that can be evaporated by the sun in a given area.

Channels with membranes
Another new process called electrodialysis is very clever (well, I think so). The seawater is pumped through a series of channels with membranes which are dedicated to passing either Sodium or Chloride ions when the appropriate voltage is applied. The fresher water is repeatedly passed through this process until its salt concentration is reduced to below 1%. An ion-exchange resin is used to bring the salt concentration below 0.5%. The energy required to do this is about 1.8 kWh per m3. Dramatically lower than distillation discussed above.

Many see the cost of these desalination plants (and use of high levels of energy) as a great issue. And regard it as cheaper to pump water out of an existing water acquifer underground. However, the problem is that the acquifer is non-renewable.

Renewable Energy isn’t always powering these desalination plants
Many marketing types are claiming that renewable energy is powering the desalination plants; hence there is no carbon footprint. However, this is not strictly true. A reverse osmosis desalination plant works continuously and power consumption is constant. Whereas renewable energy sources are intermittent and storage of the amount of energy required by a reverse osmosis plant virtually impossible. Not to say that increasing the size of renewable energy capacity isn’t admirable. It is. But we have to recognise the limitations and dynamics of power grids, power consumers and generation.

Think laterally
Obviously other solutions are to reduce the consumption of fresh water by 50% with toilet flushing etc.

Other suggestions are to use waste heat from industrial processes, which would otherwise be discarded (hence doesn’t directly cost) to perform distillation.

Another (perhaps more rural) idea is to create a rainwater capture facility which will capture more drinking water at a lower cost. I know my folks used one for many years, capturing the rainwater from their roof and using the water throughout the year (although one had to carefully watch out for dead rats and other detritus in the tank).

What does this all mean to us?

• As we are repeatedly told – fresh water is scarce and needs to be treated with care. Try and use less
• When examining a desalination system; examine all the options with great care with reference to renewable energy  – there are new systems developing all the time

As anyone who has swallowed salt water knows: ‘Revenge has no more quenching effect on emotions than salt water has on thirst’ (from Walter Weckler).

Thanks to the Economist and Dr A. Jagadeesh Nellore and Mr Ah Beng for useful information on desalination processes.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

People learn 70% of what they know about their jobs through informal means (US Bureau of Labor Stats – 1996). So stop pouring your money into formal training without pausing to consider these other more powerful options. Not through formal courses. Or training workshops.

Formal training accounts for only 20% of what people learn at work (from Jay Cross). Was it wisely spent? In many cases, I doubt it. Our experience leads us to believe that a two day short course is great. The instructor is often very good (and sometimes not so good). The transfer of learning is outstanding. Everyone understands the topic. But then no one applies the learning (and it is often difficult to apply to their jobs). And after a few weeks, it is all forgotten. So a completely wasted investment by the firm. Great course manuals. Great interaction with other professionals. But that is where the learning stops.

At the end of the day, businesses are after results. Performance. Return on investment. According to Marcia Conner (2005):  ‘the most valuable learning takes place serendipitously, by random chance.' Most companies, however, focus only on formal learning programs, losing valuable opportunities and outcomes. To truly understand the learning in your organisation you might want to recognise the informal learning already taking place and put in practices to cultivate and capture more of what people learn’.

What is informal learning?
People generally acquire the skills they use at work informally. Talking to others, watching what others do, trial-and-error and simply by osmosis, getting shown or corrected on a task they are struggling to accomplish. Engineering apprentices know all about this form of learning in learning often from a master crafts(wo)man. Graduate engineers are supposed to engage in this form of informal learning from mentors but this is often still a work-in-progress and not particularly successful.
 
Permeate your entire culture
The most powerful form of training is to permeate your entire company culture with further informal learning by encouraging dissemination of know-how continuously. An example: When a regular problem occurs and the bearing of a machine keeps seizing up or an alarm trips a part of the plant,  identify what the problem is and then try and make the learning experience more generic so that the learning experience can be spread to other instances. Gather everyone around. All five technicians, the new snotty nosed graduate engineer, the ancient manager about to retire, the reception lady and then spend 5 minutes showing them what went wrong and how to fix the problem. And then get them involved in the learning process so that they can all demonstrate they understood what happened and won’t forget it. And get them to go and teach someone else in the firm. All informally. At low cost. And yet a very powerful learning experience.

Achieve dramatic improvements to productivity through learning
A few suggestions in using informal learning:

• List all the informal training activities that are going on in your firm. Publicize them, encourage and increase them.
• Permeate your whole work culture with engineering learning – that informal learning is great and valuable. Do this from the top down.
• Build, promote and create informal communities of practice based anywhere from the water cooler to the internet
• Improve meetings to make them learning experiences for everyone.
• Encourage open distribution of ideas/know how and expertise

Here at IDC, we live, breathe and are passionate about engineering education. We run many training courses throughout the world and train tens of thousands of engineers and technicians every year and have many loyal clients. Mainly short courses and formal in a classroom or in the plant. But in some respects formal training must be one of the greatest wastes of money for engineering industry. Most of the results are not measured as far as return on investment and real improvements to productivity, morale and return on investment to the firm. We try hard to ensure our clients do this and link our formal in with their informal learning to ensure it is an enduring experience and of long term benefit. We believe that informal learning has tremendous untapped benefits and can be successfully linked in with formal training.

So why not try and put some more effort into your greatest resource?
Your people and informal learning. True engineering learning. Technology and engineering training that works. And when you use formal training, ensure that you research both the need carefully and that it is applied to the job effectively and link it in with your informal learning at your plant or office.

This true comment (along with thousands of others is attributed to Albert Einstein): ‘I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.’

Comments from last week’s blog on desalination
Thanks to the corrections from last week’s newsletter from our sharp eyed readers:

Jim Dickson writes: With respect to your recent email on desalination, you should note that 0.5% salt concentration is hardly drinking water (this concentration would be considered higher end of brackish water.   Depending on local laws/guidelines we usually look for about 300 ppm salt (equivalent) in drinking water which is 0.03 wt% - more than an order of magnitude lower than what you state.  Thought you should know that error in your announcement.

Tom Munding writes: Your article is off by a factor of 10.  Potable (drinking) water should be < 0.05% (not 0.5%) salt. 0.05% = 500 parts per million.

Yours in engineering learning
Steve

Last week's announcement by HP that it would stop making tablet computers – not particularly long after it had launched them - was a shock for many of us. In their early days, HP were always a company strongly focussed on engineering professionals. In the past year, mainly in response to the overwhelming success of the iPad launched by Apple led by the inimitable Steve Jobs, HP and a few others had launched Tablets based on the WebOS and Google's Android operating system.
 
Apple has over 60% of the tablet market with its legendary iPad - a share which is growing strongly. Windows-based tablets account for only 5% of the market. But Android-based tablets (and those from HP based on the WebOS) are definitely not  technically inferior. Far from it. Far better connectivity. Ability to run Flash-based applications. Although (arguably), Apple's design of the iPad  shows considerable panache with a slim appearance and pleasing to the eye – what we could term a so-called ‘coolness’ factor; perhaps of appeal to the ‘managerial classes’. However, what does tip the odds in Apple’s favour is that they have ensured that there are 90,000 applications for its iPad available out  of the 475,000 available from Apple App store. In contrast, there are only about 300 (out of a possible 300,000 for Android phones optimised for the Android based  tablets).
 
A flawed strategy?
Simply producing a tablet from a Netbook by squeezing it into a smaller case, adding in a new operating system (WebOS) and chucking away the keyboard and hard drive is not a complete and  successful strategy; resulting in exceedingly poor sales for HP. Only when HP slashed the price from $499 (for the basic version) to $99 did sales rocket. Naturally this is a flawed  strategy, as the price is well below the cost to product a tablet.  Perhaps, HP should have hung in for 18 months – the usual time to persist with a completely new product.
 
What does this mean for you?
This saga reinforces, the age old story. Simply copying some one else’s  product or service (with yet another "me-too" product) doesn't necessarily guarantee success unless your price is dramatically lower (which means lower profits and perhaps an unsustainable business) or unless you are building in additional useful benefits to your offering.

So, when creating new products look for unique niches and an integrated solution  with other parts of your product range - whether you are an electrician  servicing local customers and looking to distinguish your offering from those of your competitors, or a massive manufacturer of electronic  products. Above all, certainly persist longer than a few months once you have designed your new product or service; before assessing the results.
 
In my note above; I am not referring to unfair competition (or piracy) practised by some countries and individuals in fraudulently copying one’s intellectual property. This is obviously a short term successful strategy but is not fair to anyone.
 
Thanks to The Economist for a great, although contentious article, on what I can only call ‘the tablet’ wars.
 
Joseph Addison is spot on the money for anyone engineering new products or services with  his comment:
 
 If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience
 your wise counselor, caution your elder brother and hope your guardian
 genius.
 
Yours in engineering learning
 
Steve

Conflict is a key part of our lives as engineering professionals. Especially these days with so much change occurring. Conflict is a verbal (or indeed non-verbal) expressed disagreement between individuals or groups. It may occur, for example, between an engineering supervisor and employee, or manager and supervisor. And, as you all know, conflict can even exist within an individual – for example, when one part of you wants to stay at home and rest while another part of you knows you should get up and go to work (a feeling I have, when I know ‘all hell’ is breaking loose at work).

Conflict needs to be dealt with quickly and firmly. It can often be a positive thing (yes) and improve relationships, refine processes and procedures. The absence of all conflict is not necessarily a good thing. In my book, it could be the equivalent of reclining on the Titanic enjoying your daiquiri while a major catastrophe is about to unfold. When people argue and conflict is in the air, it often means that they have a venture in the outcome and deeply care about the overall project.

Root it out
Root cause analysis is a step-by-step technique to identify the cause of the failure or problem and in dealing with it. This is done by bringing together a group of people to investigate the failure or conflict by reviewing the evidence and building up a fault tree based around examining the last failure and tracing backwards each cause that led to the previous cause until the trail can be traced back no further. At this point, changes can be effected to eliminate this happening again.

We always blame someone else
Bear in mind in dealing with conflict an interesting piece of psychological research (from Fritz Heider) which is: We tend to attribute the successes of others and our own failures to external factors (i.e. outside our control). On the other hands, our own successes and failures of others are attributed to internal controllable factors.

Suggestions on dealing with team conflict

• Define the problem carefully
• Gather data and look for objective evidence
• Analyse the data
• Choose the best solution
• Implement the solution quickly and keep refining it

Some additional tools to use for your team to resolve the conflict quickly and effectively

• Attack the problem and not the person
• Focus on what can be done and not on areas where you have no control
• Encourage contribution and frank exchanges of opinion
• Express feelings in a way that does not blame but solves the problem
• Accept ownership appropriately for all or part of the problem
• Listen carefully and understand the other person’s point of view before stating your own
• Show respect for the other person
• Solve the problem whilst building the relationship

And if things get very heated; take a break and look for a lateral solution to the conflict or problem.

As Garth Brooks says: The greatest conflicts are not between two people but between one person and himself.

 
Yours in engineering learning

Steve

There is a technology that touches all of us – no matter what area of engineering you are active in and that is of course – good old Ethernet. And one of the biggest and dare, I say useful changes has been Power over Ethernet (PoE) and this note is to clarify what it is and to show you how you can take advantage of it. Being engineering, there is inevitably a twist in the tale of using PoE though, as discussed later.

One of the big frustrations today is having to provide a deluge of power adapters to power the myriad of devices around us. Fortunately, Power over Ethernet (PoE) comes to the rescue for much of this.

I must also candidly admit that I had many difficulties with PoE a few years ago with many (blue chip) vendors supplying products based on the supposedly immutable standard but which were then incompatible, causing much handwringing on my part. But I believe we are now firmly into the maturity phase now.

Why do we need Power over Ethernet ?
There has been rapid growth in Ethernet based devices requiring power. Such as VoIP telephones, cameras, Bluetooth Access points, switches, wireless access points and device servers. And an increasing list in such a wide variety of areas such as smart signs and vending, electronic banking machines, audio and video juke boxes  and so forth. There is even a Power over Ethernet Shaver on the market (not for me, as I am bewhiskered – hiding defects in my character as my mum tells me somewhat grimly) ! These devices all need power to operate. And we all know the frustrations of finding plug-in power supplies nearby to power these devices. As well as the additional mess of wiring everywhere.

The good old IEEE rides to the rescue
The IEEE thus developed the IEEE802.3af standard in 2003 to standardise a system of providing power over Ethernet over the same cabling you use to send the data communications signals (e.g. Category 5E or above). Benefits are endless – mobility of your phones and cameras, increased safety and reliability, security and reduced costs.

The Technology behind PoE
There are two different types of devices:

Powered devices (PDs) -  These accept low voltage power from a Power Sourcing Equipment device over structured Ethernet cable. Powered devices operate at 48Vdc and are classified as Safety Extra Low Voltage devices.

Power Sourcing Equipment (PSE) - These provide the dc power to the powered devices (PDs). They provide up to 12 Watts @48Vdc for each PD. A PSE may be either an endspan device (typically a network switch) or a midspan device providing power to the line. The maximum current supplied by the PSE is 350mA.

Two Alternatives with a dose of common sense
Power is provided over the cabling through two alternatives. In the first alternative power is provided on the same conductors as the data. The second alternative is where the power is carried over a spare pair of wires in the cable. Powered devices can accept power in either format. Only one format can be used. PDs automatically adjust for polarity of the power supply voltage (yayyy….for some common sense here). This is particularly vital for the unpredictability in polarity (e.g. in the cases where a cross over cable is used).

Protect your assets
A fairly obvious requirement is to prevent damage to existing Ethernet equipment. Hence, the PSE runs a discovery process by applying a small current-limited voltage to the cable to check for the presence of a 25k resistor in the remote device. If the resistor is detected; then the full (but current limited) 48V is applied.

Let’s boost the power
Although the most a device can pull through the cable is 12W to 15W; the IEEE is working on a standard to boost this to 50W. One challenge for PoE is in the wiring closets and data center operations where power issues are already stretching things with heating; and thus cooling required of switches / backup power supplies. The actual load a switch can handle can also be challenging.

Now for the problems
Some of the concerns are conditioning of power. How do you protect such an interconnected power network from a lightning strike or a surge ?  Before; everything was run over isolated fiber optic cables. Hence there will be more stress on engineering professionals who understand the power architecture and the risks and mitigation strategies. There are risks with using VoIP telephones (as we who have purchased all know). The costs have fallen but if power fails; that is the end of your telephone system. So more effort has to go into the design of the back end power supplies to have redundant power supplies to avoid the system failing.

Now for the Inevitable Twist to the Tale
One final note. Will PoE be surpassed by the newer technologies ? Speeds of Ethernet are rapidly increasing meaning that Fiber is the only real long term transport mechanism. Plus the mobility and increasing speed of Wireless is making this a very attractive option. What will this do to the use of PoE ?

A Toolkit of suggestions
A few suggestions when implementing PoE.

• Be aware of the technology and look at any equipment you are using for compatibility
• The tricky bit isn't really the IT guys but having a competent engineering designer (to consider the power and cabling issues)
• Check out your proposed competent designer’s clients and ensure they were happy with her work.
• Define the performance criteria very carefully. Ensure you budget for sufficient power from your switches; now that they may be supplying this power to the various devices.
• Start small and gradually build your PoE system up with your particular applications

Thanks to www.poweroverethernet.com and B & B Electronics for some interesting reading.

And despite the daily knocks in your work remember Herm Albright’s advice to stay positive:

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

I used to jo-ke (mistakenly) that the only secure way of protection of your control system from cyber att-acks is having an ‘airgap’ (i.e. your industrial control system has no connection to the internet or the ‘outside world’).

As we all know, one of the enduring myths of control systems has been that the highest level of se-curity is in ensuring no physical connection between the industrial automation network and the firm’s business network (and thence probably the internet). With no physical connection, it is assumed that the ghastly hackers, vir-uses and worms cannot access the industrial automation network.

The legendary Airgap
In theory, the concept of the legendary ‘air gap’ is great and gives you a warm fuzzy feeling that your industrial control system is secure. In practice it just doesn’t stack up. Probably one of the main reasons, is that your control system today uses so many components that are closely aligned with your business network ranging from the Windows operating system, word processing, spreadsheets to Adobe pdf reader to a host of other commercial packages. As well as your industrial automation software, of course. All requiring regular updates and the inevitable patches. A normal part of software life.

Patch files riddled with vir-uses
So if you have decided on an ‘air gap’ to maintain se-curity of your system what do you do to update your isolated system ? You put all these new patch files onto a USB ‘stick’ or CD and transport this across to your isolated control system. But this was how the Stuxnet vir-us was spread. Or use a dedicated laptop to copy the files across using a serial connection. Well, as Eric Byres pointed out – this is how the Slammer worm jumped into numerous control systems.

Vendors preach
Many vendors will preach about the necessity for an airgap to protect your control system but in the same breath, will also talk about total plant integration of your control, MES and ERP systems. It is difficult to visualise seamless integration over an airgap.

Much as we would like to isolate our trusted control systems by terminating any pathways to the outside world, this is impossible. All that happens is that you create new pathways.

There are some exceptions
I do admit that there are those very simple control systems such as your airconditioning control system for your room, which are not connected to the outside world but even here, you may want to update a program with an EPROM (or equivalent) and many users want to monitor their systems remotely over the Internet. Perhaps, there are extraordinarily high risk military and nuclear installations where there are airgaps where very occasional upgrades are very carefully done. Even here, there are significant risks.

Assume the worse and plan accordingly
But most traditional industrial control systems for our typical plants, power and water utilities do not have airgaps and are connected to their company’s business networks.
So to face up to cyberse-curity issues, you need to face up to the brutal reality, that your control system is indeed connected to the malicious outside world and your computer se-curity measures need to assume the worse. None of us are immune to att-ack. We need to design and maintain our systems on this basis.

Thanks to Eric Byres and Dale Peterson for an interesting set of discussions.

In the context of se-curity of our networks, perhaps General Douglas MacArthur’s remark is another way of looking at the problem: There is no se-curity on this earth, there is only opp-ortunity.

Yours in engineering learning
Steve

As far as I am concerned, the 'Cloud' everyone is talking about these days, is potentially some used car operator next door to your premises offering you rental of his computer system so that he can make a quick buck. Perhaps an unfair accusation.

No matter whether you are a fitter or technical director of a multinational company you will be touched by cloud computing. With many new openings and threats arising from the movement of your computing requirements to the cloud.

What exactly is the cloud?
This is where all your computing resources are provided as a service over the Internet. And which you can demand and expect massive swings in usage (for example; you can move from computing requirements for 2 employees to 300, in short order in the twinkle of an eye). Microsoft is now offering you unlimited usage of MS Office for a few bucks a month through the cloud (as is Google for equivalent apps). And Apple allows you to store and access your tunes in the cloud. Not much software required on your computer. Unlike the (bad?) old days where your computer was the centre of the universe.

Effectively this means, that as long as you can access the Internet, you can outsource all your email / database work / Word Processing /AutoCad and indeed any software to some remote site with a server and make it some else's responsibility. This means your computer becomes merely a stand-alone almost ‘software-less’ device, and really serves to connect you to the Internet to this remote server where all the software power is located.

I love this simpler explanation of the cloud
Vivek Kundra (the CIO of the USA government) gave this interesting analogy to the cloud:
'There was a time when every household, town, farm or village had its own water well. Today, shared public utilities give us access to clean water by simply turning on the tap; cloud computing works in a similar fashion. Just like water from the tap in your kitchen, cloud computing services can be turned on or off quickly as needed. Like at the water company, there are dedicated professionals making sure the service provided is safe, secure and available on a 24/7 basis. When the tap isn't on, not only are you saving water, but you aren't paying for resources you don't currently need'.

Why has this come to pass now?
Well; with the internet becoming so fast and indeed, quite reliable, it makes the move to outsourcing your software to another site quite feasible. And with IT types running around your business trying to keep your system running 24x7 flawlessly at considerable expense; you are probably frustrated with the quality of IT operation.

Is this move to a cloud a good thing?
Now this is the question which everyone is currently pondering. Certainly it is an attractive concept. It means no more day-to-day problems with your IT and network trying to handle the often daily massive swings in demand. You outsource the whole problem to some other ‘sucker’. Problems with cloud computing one can think about immediately are:

• Sec- urity. How can we ensure sec- urity of our data? Especially if you have sensitive data and this is located in some other country other than yours. In many cases it would be illegal to house sensitive personal data in someone else’s server.
• Access. What happens when the cloud server fails or your internet connection is lost. A veritable nightmare as you immediately cease to have ALL IT services.
• Control. You give control of your data to someone else and become captive to them (think of sudden price rises in the use of the cloud).
• Loss of Data/crashes of system. What happens when your cloud server crashes and loses all your data?

And as one colleague remarked to me recently: 'If you saw some of these shonky operators providing Cloud resources you would be horrified at outsourcing even your bathroom cleaning requirements.

Many questions and not many obvious answers.

Advantages of cloud computing for engineering professionals
I would be the first to say - this list below are potential advantages, but depend from case to case.

• Easy  global access to your software no matter where in the world you are located
• Responsibility for your IT programs to someone else 
• Reduced overhead - fewer IT techs, servers and storage devices
• Superb software interoperability between you and your vendors and clients
• Software updates done cleanly and effectively
• Perhaps (yes !) more effective sec- urity by placing your data in the care of outstanding professionals
• No more distractions with day-to-day IT issues and staff but you focus on what you are good at – engineering.

No one can promise you that this is the way to go
Cloud computing does look like a trend that is here to stay. So definitely worth investigating. But something to examine with great care. Only you can know what is good for you. The de-vil probably is in the detail of what to put into the cloud and with whom to form a ‘cloud relationship’.

As a parting comment - What about putting your entire PLC ladderlogic program and SCADA system in the cloud?

I am sure there will be some screams of anguish at this ludicrous suggestion. And at this stage; it would be impossible and indeed, high risk when you consider PLCs require real time operation of microseconds; something the cloud will not deliver. Apart from the other issues. But...who knows what the future holds...?

Thanks to Jeremy Pollard and The Engineeringdaily.net for interesting reflections on the topic of cloud computing.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear colleagues

Are we reaching the end of the road with the relentless continuous drop in computer prices and surge in performance? There are some interesting changes lurching into view. Intel has been the forerunner in CPU chip design (with 80% of the market for PC CPUs) but the ending of Moore’s Law and incredible growth in mobile devices such as smart phones and tablet computers are going to have an impact on your life shortly.

Why do you need to bother about this stuff? Well – computing is generally a key part of any engineering professional’s life and it is vital to know how these changes will affect your work and personal life.

Moore’s Law
Most of us have probably heard of Moore’s Law which has operated like clockwork over the past fifty years and predicts that the number of transistors stuffed into a piece of silicon doubles roughly every two years. From 2014, component dimensions are poised to shrink to 14 nanometres. At this point, quantum tunnelling effects make it very difficult for processors to operate effectively. One suggestion to extend Moore’s Law is to get the transistor to switch between four states, thus doing the work of two transistors. But a brilliant way of dealing with this problem now, as implemented by Intel, is to use a 3-dimensional chip architecture.

3-d is the way to go
Traditionally, integrated circuits have had a two-dimensional flat structure, with a metal gate straddling a flat conducting channel of silicon. This gate controls the current flowing from the source electrode to the drain electrode (each electrode located at opposite ends of the channel of silicon). The incredibly small size of the gate has now made it rather ineffective in switching the transistor.

Intel has now cleverly made the conducting channel a vertical silicon fence that rises above the surface of the silicon. The gate straddles this 3-d structure and has three surfaces in which to control the flow of current; thus making new transistor designs considerably faster and consuming far lower power.

Mobile is growing incredibly fast and low power with RISC
The mobile market (phones and tablets) is growing in leaps and bounds and this is where things get somewhat tricky for Intel. Most of chips in the mobile market are designed by ARM (Advanced RISC machines) who licence out to various (competing) chipmakers throughout the world. Some of you may remember ARM from the early ubiquitous British ACORN computers.

ARM Processors are incredibly compact, work at low operating temperatures and have minimal power consumption compared to the Intel’s chips (which drain in between two and ten times more power). ARM doesn’t (currently !) have any tedious requirements for backward compatibility, which Intel has to work hard on ensuring.

But the biggest bugbear is backwards compatibility with software
However as we sadly know - software is always considerably more expensive than hardware. So even if you were given a free computer with a hundred times the performance, you would be reluctant to change over to it, if your existing software wouldn’t run. Intel’s architecture is complex because of the need to maintain backwards compatibility with earlier versions of software. Something quite daunting for a chip designer moving from a 16-bit 8086/88 processor to the current 64-bit versions. The ARM processor has been designed around the 32-bit processor and is still fundamentally eighties architecture but is incompatible with the broad range of Intel-based software.

ARM-based designs have been thrust into the limelight because of Intel’s rapidly increasing complexity and resulting high power consumption; which makes Intel difficult to use in small battery powered consumer devices where backwards compatibility is not a major issue. But…..undoubtedly, backwards compatibility will soon be a major issue ! Watch this space as to how this issue unfolds.

So what do you need to do about this?
• Keep reading about new developments with Intel and mobile computing
• Observe what happens to Moore’s Law in the next two years
• Look at how mobile computing deals with the compatibility issue with Intel-based software
• Watch and seize openings with the rapid convergence of mobile and traditional computing

An interesting observation from Rick Cook: Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

Thanks to the Economist and Guillermo Marraco for some excellent commentary on the subject.

Yours in engineering learning

Dear Colleagues

Even as long ago as the 1970's, our engineering school saw massively declining enrolments in power systems engineering. Everyone wanted to undertake the high tech type electronics courses. Students were unexcited by power engineering as they perceived it to be old, inflexible and industrial ‘smoke stack’ type engineering. As students we were rather daunted by working with gigantic pieces of switchgear and generating sets (can anyone remember ‘Ward Leonard’ generation ?). Software and electronics seemed infinitely more sexy and something you could control. Power engineering overlapped with mechanical and civil engineering (think of the giant bearings for a generator or the transmission towers striding across your landscape).

Of course, this is not the case at all today.

Today, three things are happening to change power engineering:

• Green technologies are transforming generation (and storage), transmission, distribution technologies
• Power engineering professionals are starting to retire (or at least go part-time)
• There are minimal new entrants to “classical” power engineering

I think we all know that there is considerable uncertainty about government regulation in terms of the green technologies (e.g. the debate on the upcoming ‘carbon tax’). This will have a considerable impact on the precise mix of the various technologies that are used.

Almost half of the power engineers at US electrical utilities will be eligible for retirement in the next few years. And seemingly over 70% of engineering college faculty in power engineering are close to retirement age. I am always startled by the number of older retired engineers (well, I shouldn't be) who look on puzzled when you ask them to work longer hours than the 10 odd part time hours they are doing every week. The additional money is meaningless in most cases and unless it is stimulating work, full of fun or capable of some serious contribution to people, society or the environment, they often lose interest.

It is quite amazing how many universities and colleges have partially or totally shut down their power engineering programs. All of this know-how leaving us.

Fortunately, power engineering today is almost unrecognizable from 20 years ago, with a strong emphasis on software, electronics, communications, if you think of the infinitely varying requirements of the smart grid. The smart grid makes the new power grid very similar to the Internet. A lot of investment in smart grids involves fiber and wireless networks. Although these skills are important, the traditional skills of power engineering are still vital. The ability to create an efficient power system design is very important. Solar and wind energy farms are often located far from the customers and this makes for more design challenges.

So, it is now vital to be re enthused with the opportunities for career and work possibilities in the ‘new’ power engineering and the contribution you can make as an engineering professional.

Perhaps, we should treat the power industry along the lines John F. Kennedy remarked: The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger - but recognize the opportunity.

Thanks to John R.Platt from the IEEE for a thought provoking article and the Economist for more on renewable energy.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

As we know – engineering professionals hugely underestimate their contribution and role in industry and the community. An interesting commentary from Albert (‘Al’) Koenig, past-statutory head of the Office of EnergySafety Western Australia (who now mixes diverse consulting interests with time on his beloved Bertram35). He feels strongly about safety in the workplace and the public domain, especially when it comes to electricity. An extract on the age old topic of earthing/ground practice at the end of this note.

Engineering professionals should be proud
He remarks:  As engineers and technical people we are proud to make things happen and but it’s important that in this desire to produce an outcome, the technical solutions properly take into account:

• The relevant technical and safety requirements of a statutory nature (the legal requirements, contained in Acts, Regulations and referenced technical standards/codes);
• The possible need for additional measures to guard people and property (moral issues that arise because simple compliance with local laws may not deliver an adequately safe outcome for people and property – this is where issues such as good risk management and “good industry practice” come into play); and
• The wider corporate responsibility and also the impact on corporate image (and thus shareholder value) should a major deficiency with the outcome become evident.  For example, the capacity and means for ensuring the ongoing safety of facilities in the long term need to be considered, where relevant.

An Energy Safety checklist
I believe these three issues need to be seen as part of the “energy safety checklist” that practitioners apply as part of their work, in their endeavour for continuous improvement, whether working on infrastructure (e.g. electricity or gas transmission lines, power stations etc) or industry installations (of mine sites, process plants or large buildings).

Massive Energy Safety failures
There have been some very newsworthy energy safety failures in recent times and two come to mind (besides the Gulf of Mexico rig explosion, of course).  Firstly during early June 2010 there was a substation explosion and fire in Dhaka, Bangladesh which resulted in the death of at least 117 people and many more injured people, as the substation was next to a building storing various flammable chemicals.  Secondly, during August 2010 it was announced that British Petroleum had agreed to pay an unprecedented OSH law fine of US$51m for failing to correct safety hazards at its Texas City oil refinery after an explosion killed 15 workers in 2005.  The latter failure to comply is now not only costing BP a huge amount of money, but is also seriously hurting the company’s image and credibility. 

Safety short cuts are expensive
It highlights that taking safety shortcuts to salt away some dollars doesn’t really conserve money in the long run.  It also highlights that engineers should not be afraid to make sure the right information goes “up the line” to CEOs and also the directors of company boards, since many now take pride in reporting corporate performance through a triple bottom line  – known as people, planet & profit.

Thanks Al for this useful commentary.

In undertaking your day-to-day work, especially as far as safety is concerned, Howard Newton sagely observed: People forget how fast you did a task - but they remember how well you did it.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

I am currently on a roadshow presenting on a variety of subjects from industrial data comms and process control to electrical arc flash protection, which makes me think faintly of ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’ but there you go. Thanks for the hundreds of participants for rocking up. Bela Farbas of Australia made some comments on one of my earlier notes and these brought a wry smile. He has gracefully allowed me to reproduce all his comments below.

Bela Farbas says: I would like to offer a comment not just for mechanical engineering professionals, but all engineering professionals working in a leading role in multidisciplinary projects. I work in the domain of industrial automation as an electrical and software design professional. In most projects that I am involved in the engineering professionals managing the projects at top level are of mechanical, chemical, or similar background.

To get to my point, my advice is: work out your naming, numbering, tagging system early in the project and DO NOT CHANGE the names, device ID-s, tags etc. after that. Once the initial (“for tender”, “for approval”) documents are distributed between the current and future stakeholders in the project any naming, device ID change in the project creates problems, confusion and significant latent costs.

Many times at top project management renaming the devices on the P&ID drawings seems a seductively simple exercise (“just change the tags, search & replace”), but think about all the information already generated with the existing tagging system.

These lists are already distributed and archived in countless spread sheets, emails, on drawings, cable schedules, software tags, IO lists, just to name a few. Changing them all is virtually impossible, so it does not happen. It leads to a lot of email exchanges in style of “did you mean Conveyor 5 of 3kW, or the old Conveyor 5 of 15kW?”
 
Sometimes it is hard to make this point understood; I usually offer this analogy:
 
“You live in East Street and there is a West Street in your neighbourhood too. Somebody decides to swap the two street names. Not a big problem, all you have to do is to let everybody know that you now live in 25 West Street now.
Send a few emails to your friends, send a letter to your bank, ring Telstra… Did you forget Medibank? Your new credit card (already posted) might go to your neighbour… Hopefully he will send it back…
You get a phone call for unpaid bills (that were sent to your old address)… You start wondering if the usage on your gas bill is based on your gas meter, or your neighbours… You try to ring the electricity company (…your call is important to us!)…”
 
How many man hours would this take to sort out?
 
I hope you find this comment useful, or at least worth a smile.

Obviously, with engineering drawings we never quite reach perfection - as Michael J. Fox remarks: I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business.

In the late seventies, medical electronics was a pretty tough business. I remember doubtfully fingering a huge rather primitive heart pacemaker for some (presumably) live patient, designed at our engineering school, while Christiaan Barnard, the heart surgeon, gave a brief (we were but mere engineering students) but passionate lecture on the importance of medicine and technology in improving the quality of life (but not prolonging it unnecessarily).

The number one growth job
The New York Times recently hailed biomedical engineering as the number one growth job for the coming decade (a projected 72% growth rate over the decade). It has now become a defined field of engineering of its own. Obviously, this is growth off a small base, so this doesn’t suddenly mean tens of thousands of engineering jobs. But this is compared to the traditional fields of engineering which have more cautious growth of a few percent (unless of course, you are in the resource rich countries such as Australia, Canada and South Africa, where any engineering professional is in ferocious demand).

A marriage between medicine and engineering
Biomedical engineering is a bridge across medical and engineering disciplines, with an emphasis on engineering. These engineers, technologists and technicians design, build and maintain critical devices such as artificial limbs, organs and new generation imaging machines. They also work in improving processes such as genomic (to do with genes) testing and manufacturing drugs. The mind boggles at the incredible range of products that the human body needs.

Obviously, two of the key drivers for growth in biomedical engineering is the rapid development of medical technology and the aging population demanding high quality healthcare (with somewhat growing healthcare systems). In addition, the growth in pharmaceutical and genetic engineering industries are driving this increased need for biomedical engineering professionals.

We need education 
The emphasis in biomedical engineering education is on maths, chemistry, physics, engineering and naturally biology. Perhaps, the emphasis on maths and the sciences is off-putting to many potential students. An understanding of the human body and how engineering can be effectively applied in this rather challenging area is vital. Surprisingly, biomedical engineers enjoy a broader education than other engineering specialities and have become known as generalists working in a wide variety of jobs from design, manufacturing to managing projects (medical devices) and getting products to market.

Tough encounters of the medical kind
One tough challenge in working in biomedical engineering, I know from personal encounters in this area, is that getting approval for sales of any manufactured devices in the medical area is fiendishly difficult. And many aspiring (perhaps high quality) medical products have fallen by the wayside due to the incredibly expensive, complex and intricate approvals required. After all, it is for the human body and one’s health is absolute paramount. Approval to sell a product in one country definitely doesn’t mean approval in any other country. The need to comply with the numerous medical standards is driven by the constant stream of bad news about injuries and death caused by supposedly suspect products, services and medicines.

Industrial IT and communications also fast growing
Interestingly, the other hot job growth area is in network systems and data communications with growth of 53% projected over the upcoming decade (and a massive chunk of an additional 156,000 jobs in the USA alone) due to the rapid growth in cloud computing, mobile networking technologies, tablets, smartphones and the list goes on. One can (reasonably) safely assume this will mean the associated engineering world with industrial IT and industrial data communications will grow in a similar way. But this growth will come as no surprise to most of working in engineering who see the incredible impact of IT on everything we do (both good and bad!).

So my suggestions on biomedical engineering are:
• Read up as much as possible about this incredibly fast growing field
• Look for chances to incorporate your know-how, products, services and technology into the medical field. Every field of engineering can make a contribution to biomedical engineering as it is a brilliant amalgam of so many fields of engineering – electrical/electronics/mechanical/chemical/Industrial IT/civil……
• The entrepreneurial prospects (and risks) for products and services in biomedical engineering are huge

Obviously, the emphasis on engineering should always be on delivering real results and avoiding what Martin Henry Fischer refers to: ‘Half of the modern drugs could well be thrown out of the window, except that the birds might eat them’.

References are from the New York Times April 13, 2011 (‘Top 10 List: Where the Jobs are’) and John R. Platt of the IEEE; with thanks.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

We are almost half way through the year. Hopefully you are one of the 14% who keep your New Year's resolutions especially in terms of your engineering career ? Some suggestions below from those who have achieved success in their career. Peter Drucker, the famous management guru, remarked that first of all one has to set one's vision of one’s career to higher sights and then commit to achieving this.

Some suggestions to boost your engineering career today:

• Make sure you have a business and life plan which is strategic in nature and long term. Nothing particularly detailed - just short and to the point. Where do you want to be personally and professionally in a year's time? A plan certainly doesn't have to be solely about money. If it is, it is unlikely to be very successful. But it has to be aligned with your interests and what you are capable of. And take into account what you are currently doing. If you are in a hut somewhere in the middle of the Great Sandy Desert working as a consultant for a pittance on a mine; you may need to rethink your situation. Or working in some remote location doing very basic work but earning good money but which is actually degrading your engineering skills you may also need to wonder where you will be in a few years time. Write your plan down and refer to it on  a daily basis
• Keep your skills sharp and current. This doesn't mean that you have to suddenly go on a deluge of training courses or a Master degree. Informal learning can be even more powerful than a training class - where you learn from a highly experienced mentor or trusted colleague. Keep an eye on what is required in terms of skills. This is a constantly shifting and changing environment. Currently certain engineering professionals are in ferocious demand; others not so
• Deliver real results to your organisation and ensure (modestly) that they are aware of this. Working long hours is not really the only way of demonstrating real results. This is about completing projects successfully to a budget. Against all sorts of obstacles. Persistence and innovative thinking are keys here. And a touch of lateral thinking for those enormously thorny problems
• Communicate well in terms of writing and talking to your peers, clients and suppliers. Email is not a particularly effective way of communicating (although highly convenient)
• Review your progress and consider feedback from others. This can help you sharpen your act. Not always pleasant to hear negative comments. But that is life. Watch out for your subordinates giving you glowing comments on every occasion. They may be “yes (wo)men”
• Give credit where it is due. Acknowledge the success of others and enthusiastically  celebrate others successes. They will respect and support you with your successes
• Be passionate, enthusiastic and have a positive attitude. Especially when the chips are down. Avoid the blame game. Apart from identifying ways of improving things. Avoid anger and negativity wherever possible. Conflict is generally a dead end and is best to be avoided with a win-win solution

I always like this quotation from Louis Nizer:
A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues,

Electrical and mechanical engineering professionals often lose track of important issues in each other’s field. Mechatronics is an excellent example of multidisciplinary engineering often combining state-of-the-art mechanical and electrical engineering with control and instrumentation thrown in.

Some tips follow for the mechanical guys in creating the best design taking consideration of the electrical issues (adjusted from Dan Throne’s note). This will help optimise the operation with lower operating and maintenance costs. As I chewed on this, I am sure there will be some additional comments and indeed, disagreements – so please send comments through and I will highlight them in the next blog.

Top Electrical Considerations for mechanical professionals

Create a clean mechanical design. Although mechanical engineers think that the automation and electrical engineers can often compensate for problems in the mechanical areas (which they can do); this can be challenging and obviously isn’t the best approach. A “clean” mechanical design means a strong, rigid frame so that there is stability no matter what motion the machine goes through. Rigid bearings and support should be utilised where motors are mounted on machines. This avoids the inevitable result of shafts being sheared. Other issues are avoiding unnecessary vibration / motors placed in best position so that electric cables aren’t in awkward places waiting for operators to trip over them / machine guarding placed appropriately / heat from motors and electronics is dealt with appropriately and vibration is minimised. And naturally - components can be easily (and safely) accessed for maintenance.

Directly couple the motor to the load. Older designs (some a few hundred years old) were based on an ac motor powering a machine line shaft to which were connected gearboxes, pulleys and other mechanical devices. Try and simplify this by individual servo motors coupled directly (and as close as possible) to the load. This minimises additional failure points, costs of pulleys, gears, sprockets and maintenance costs and reduces costs dramatically (with no more irritating backlash problems with gears).

Utilise electronic gearing and camming. Today you can create a “virtual electronic line shaft” (as Dan Throne so aptly puts it). This can electronically synchronise all drives and motors on the machine thus eliminating the mechanical line shaft (with no mechanical backlash – yay!). Motion precision can be made incredibly high.

Design green for energy efficiency. Today energy costs are ramping up dramatically and people are considerably more environmentally aware of the need for energy savings. Sizing of motors needs to be done just right with careful consideration of acceleration requirements of the load; the size of the mass to be moved and precision requirements for the acceleration and deceleration. If you undersize, you may strain your drives; if you oversize you waste energy by drawing too much power. With larger machines, regenerative power supplies can feed excess power (e.g. due to the deceleration process of the motors) back into the electricity grid (and not waste it as heat as in older drives).

Use HMIs/ SCADA and PLCs effectively for troubleshooting. As an example of how to do this properly, one only needs to think of the irritating paper jams on your photocopier. Nowadays (well, on ours at least), the diagnostics on the little display panel (HMI) shows how to fix these in an idiotproof way (and written so that even an orang utan can remedy the problem). A mechatronics designer can incorporate in the HMI easy-to-action diagnostics and easy-to-read drawings on identifying and fixing problems. The PLC and associated sensors can be set up with tolerance bands so you can build in predictive maintenance into your machine with unacceptable variations in load; temperatures; vibration; torque; belt tightness; gear meshing etc detected and reported via the HMI.

Thanks to Dan Throne off Rexroth Bosch Group for a great whitepaper (and no, we don’t get paid for promoting them!). I think I can safely say with my experiences with troubleshooting mechatronics systems that this comment is probably true from Sidney J. Harris: Never take the advice of someone who has not had your kind of trouble.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

'Until the first electrician picks up a screwdriver to implement your clever engineering design, all your theory is meaningless, my lad' was a remark my dad used to not infrequently make to me.

When I was a young engineer, I trained under a number of cra-ftsmen – who taught me all about fitting and turning, boilermaking, cabinet making, welding and electrical work (and it was surely an exasperating experience for them). A team of engineering technicians in a nearby electronics workshop also demonstrated a bewildering level of manual skill and dexterity with intricate cabling, wiring harnesses, soldering and circuit board construction. They all demonstrated enormous passion and pride in their cra-ft. Despite considerable effort, many of us, junior engineers, never managed to gain even a fraction of their skills. Much to these cra-ftsmen’s faint amusement and puzzlement.

We lose sight in the daily haze
I think in the daily haze of software, theory, paperwork, standards, regulations, procedures, policies and systems we operate in; we tend to forget this as engineering professionals. Despite all the changes in engineering today, the engineering cra-ftswoman and cra-ftsman is still a key contributor in the engineering team and should always be accorded enormous respect.

The original description of a cra-ftsman or artisan referred only to manual occupations such as glassblower, blacksmith, cabinetmaker – many of who still exist. The output of such masters of the craft were almost always unique, one-off objects of value, all of indubitable excellence.

Nowadays
Nowadays, the cra-ftsman is often referred to as someone with outstanding manual dexterity and skill who takes enormous pride in what he or she does. In our engineering experience, this obviously ranges from tradesmen or artisans such as mechanical fitter, machinist, electrician, welder, builder, cabinet maker to electronics technician. The true cra-ftswoman today uses the new tools and technology at her disposal to refine her craft to produce physical objects impossible or very difficult to make by hand. And similarly impossible to replicate entirely by machine.

But how does this all help you in your work?
Remember the times, as an engineering professional, you have been enormously frustrated by having someone on your team who has delivered less than perfect cra-ftsmanship and thus….

• Ensure you only work with outstanding cra-fts(wo)men in undertaking your projects
• If you are still young, flexible and full of energy, work on gaining some of these artisan skills
• Build enormous value into your future projects/products/services, by only using these outstanding cra-fts(wo)men.

As Robert L. Kruse points out (Data Structures and Program Design), even outstanding programmers can be referred to as cra-ftsmen: ‘An apprentice carpenter may want only a hammer and saw, but a master craftsman employs many precision tools. Computer programming likewise requires sophisticated tools to cope with the complexity of real applications, and only practice with these tools will build skill in their use’.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

One of the workhorses in industry – no matter whether you are in industrial automation, electrical or mechanical engineering, you are likely to be confronted with one of these little fellahs - a Programmable Logic Controller or PLC (or indeed, Programmable Automation Controller – PAC).  A critical cheap building block for all automated systems. Effectively, an industrially hardened digital electronic device in which a sequence of instructions are stored, which enable the PLC to replace hard wired relay logic and perform counting, sequencing and timing. As well, as reading analog inputs (e.g. from a flow meter) and outputting analog output control signals to valves and other control devices.

A few tips on troubleshooting these devices (yes – the veterans amongst you will sigh, when you know your enormous depth of experience built up to do this – as against my short note below).

I have presumed in the suggestions on troubleshooting, that your PLC has been operating correctly and there are no recent program changes.

The first decision is to decide whether the problem is internal or external to the PLC. Over 80% of PLC malfunctions are with the I/O modules and field equipment (OK; I agree – where did this statistic come from – but it does make sense). Problems related to a specific I/O module or input/output device are generally external problems while large groups of failures are generally related to the internals of the PLC.

Internal problems - first cab off the rank

• Check that your earthing/grounding is correct. Inspect power and ground wiring. Check that voltage between PLC ground terminal and known ground is actually zero. You may need to log this over time with a scope to find pesky transient changes in voltage.
• Check the power supply to the PLC is operating within the correct ranges for both CPU and I/O modules (and that the ac ripple on your dc supplies is not excessive).
• Check batteries on PLC are still OK.
• EMC/EMI problems get trickier – look for an EMC/EMI “event” such as motor starting/arc welding in the area or lightning strike which may match up with erratic behaviour of your PLC.
• Check the PLC program hasn’t been corrupted (occasionally on cheaper devices I have seen this happen much to my amazement). Ensure program is backed up off-site when examining it.
• Check the internal diagnostics for a collapse of one of your PLC programs or subroutines or some other error (divide by zero)

External problems – the more likely problem

The main issue here is to find out why your internal program and data status doesn’t match up with the external situation.

Digital inputs
• Check the power supply to the module.
• Look for where the power to a digital input comes from (not normally from the PLC I/O module).
• Check fuses, breakers and any other cause of power interruption  to the digital input
• Check for adequate changes in voltage to the digital input when the external field device is operated.
• If the digital input is operating correctly and the CPU is still misreading it; the problem may lie in the PLC program.
Digital Outputs
• For digital outputs, check where the power is being supplied by. Often not from the PLC output card itself.
• Check the power output from the PLC.
• Check fuses (and fuse blown indicators).
• Force digital outputs on and off .
• Preferably use a test load (rather than open circuit it) when testing the PLC outputs.
Analog Inputs
• For analog inputs; move the field device (an instrument) through the full range of current (e.g. 4-20mA) and confirm this is reflected in the equivalent register in the PLC.
• If there is uncertainty here, hook up a signal transmitter and run through the full range of current (or voltage).
Analog Outputs
• For Analog outputs – in your PLC program force the output to a specific value and observe that the output reflects this. If not; check the external wiring and then the actual output, with a 250 ohm resistor for example.

The hazards of re-mote troubleshooting

Some of my recent forays increasingly have been into re-mote troubleshooting of PLCs located thousands of kms away. But this can be hazardous enough without enormous care taken with network sec-urity to ensure that Uncle Amir from the West Waziristan Taliban doesn't break into your critical industrial control system of your oil rig.

A few thorny transient problems

In my experience in troubleshooting, I have been occasionally exposed to sudden overvoltages which blew a range of variable speed drives and PLC inputs (due to discharge of a capacitor bank with a very sharp transient). Other ones have been horrible harmonics introduced by a new drive. This required isolation of analog inputs to eliminate this (as we then had analysing problems). Finally, data communications problems traced to common mode voltages surges and fixable by isolation (fiber optics) and improved earthing.

When in doubt; disconnect

And when testing a PLC, ensure that you disconnect any critical high powered equipment when testing outputs. One PLC programmer I know accidentally started a 1MW ball mill accidentally when testing a tiny digital output from the PLC…...

Particularly true of troubleshooting PLCs is Oscar Wilde's comment:

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

The only way to learn is by your own efforts in troubleshooting.

Thanks to Ryan G. Rosandich for a great article on Troubleshooting PLCs.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

Perhaps like you, I tend to get somewhat peevish when confronted with yet another ghastly software package or computer interface which is unusable without considerable (indeed mind altering) training. And yet, surely usability is one of our most vital missions or requirements when designing and building a product (or indeed in delivering a service).

I always suggest in our software projects, much to amusement of our programmers, that you should design the (often, software) interface so that even an orang-utan can sensibly use it. As engineering professionals, in our pursuit of efficiency and technical excellence we often lose sight of the key issue that eventually  a human  will be using our product. Whether it is a chef in a kitchen pressing the button on a mixer, an operator controlling a nuclear reactor or indeed you - trying to grasp how to record a TV program on your new video recorder.

Usability is defined as: ‘the degree to which something—software, hardware, or anything else—is easy to use and a good fit for the people who use it . . . It is whether a product is efficient, effective, and satisfying for those who use it.’ (from  the Usability Professionals’ Association).

From a computer perspective (as you would expect !), Apple has the highest rating of usability of  all computer users (in a recent survey rated at 80%, compared to the pack of computer vendors lurching  around at 60%). Personally, Steve Jobs of Apple is ruthless in his pursuit of usability – for example, the i/Pod has a very simple “usable” interface (designed for use by an orang utan !).

As some of the old hands would remember, when we design engineers and technicians had designed the product, we sat around with a technical writer and put together a manual and documentation on how to use it. At the same time, we often did a test with a few clients on how they perceived the product and then made some changes to make it more user friendly and usable. As products became more complex, these instruction manuals became larger and more unwieldy. And often required training in how to read the manual and thence the product. The final stage was to place the gigantic product manual on an accompanying CD (supposedly to save paper but really  to save the vendor money); which of course no one read. We have now reached the stage, where the software package often has the help facility built into it with no written instructions available (if you are desperate you can search the internet for some manual). Apparently the software will proffer you appropriate help when you need it. Yeah. Right.

Incidents of horrible usability
I can still remember incidents of products of horrible usability. A firm in Boston designed and sold us an expensive sequence events recorder for recording power system protection events which required intricate care in setting up (using a poorly written instruction manual with parts still handwritten). When we reverted back to the original design team for help  (technical support had long since abandoned us), their unforgettable rejoinder to us was: ‘Have patience; together we can make a better product’. Or a supposedly comprehensive SCADA software product which came with a deluge of manuals (relating only to the operating system and nothing on the actual SCADA software). When pressed the SCADA vendor faxed the three page Operators and Programmers manual through to us. The firm has long since being consigned to  the dustbin of Industrial Automation history. Or the control system for a gas turbine which again consisted of a ‘work in progress’ being intermittently transformed from a "home  designed Boy's Own electronics system" to a more professional PLC based system; which required incredible contortions from the operators to program and understand.

As we all know (from previous experience) many software  vendors simply release their program  to  the unwary masses without comprehensive testing with the idea that they will let the market be the test bed. This is often due to the costs of development having overshot the budget and the time to completion has also long since been exceeded with the consequent urgent need to get the product to market as soon as possible.

The Science of Usability Components
As Jakob Nielsen remarks - usability has five main components:

• Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
• Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
• Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they re-establish proficiency?
• Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
• Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?

How to improve the usability of our designs
• Probably  the quickest way to improve usability is to get hold of some typical independent users (outside your  department and indeed your company preferably)
• Get the users to perform typical tasks without any intervention from you
• Observe what the users do / where they succeed / and where they have difficulties. Don't co-ach or help them; let them work on  their own and let them explain the problems.
• Keep iterating the process by improving the usability and let new independent users again test it out

As Donald Norman remarks: Beauty and brains, plea-sure and usability — they should go hand in hand.

Thanks to the inimitable Donald Christiansen of the IEEE for a thought provoking article; and Jakob Nielsen on his web site: http://www.useit.com/ (focussing mainly on web usability).

Yours in engineering learning
Steve