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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

Dear Colleagues,

I constantly feel bankrupt for good engineering ideas or in solving thorny problems. A colleague gave me a few good suggestions as per below. And a great 30p. chapter on pH measurement from our analytical instrumentation manual at the end of this note.

Engineering professionals have to be rational, sensible and regimented in their thinking with the critical work they are doing. You can’t go around being irrational when working on a high voltage system or designing a process control system for handling caustic soda. Sometimes this emphasis on rationality means you lose some chance to be creative. Creativity does require suspending some degree of rationality in thinking of all possible alternatives to a problem.

So if you are ever looking for an idea or approach for some intractable problem, let me refresh you on good old brainstorming. Which really works and can be enormously helpful in solving a problem or coming up with a slew of new ideas. Admittedly, many of the ideas generated are probably useless but there are diamonds hiding there as a product of your brainstorming efforts.

What do you do in brainstorming ?
First of all, participants should be reasonably at ease with each other. But definitely “their own person with their own ideas” and not be crushed into submission by the others in the group.

• Choose a facilitator to record ideas on large poster-size sheets of paper around the room.
• Pose an initial question. The facilitator should ask the initial question and then start scribbling down the suggestions from the group asquickly as possible.
• Identify the challenge and throw this open to everyone to consider and make suggestions.
• Suspend criticism. All ideas should be encouraged and recorded without comment or criticism from the group. Collect as many ideas as possible. Yes - quantity is more important than quality at this stage.
• Be silly with your ideas. Don’t be rational but consider all possibilities.
• Don’t evaluate the ideas at this stage. Don’t assess and consider the ideas now. Leave this till later.
• Build on each other’s ideas. Feed on your engineering colleague’s idea and build it out further.
• Drag the bottom for ideas. Keep grabbing ideas and encouraging new ones to come forth. Scratch the bottom of your brain for ideas. A hard process but ultimately rewarding.
• Review all the ideas after 15 to 20 minutes. Merge the concepts, bounce the ideas off the list, combine them and then use some rational judgment to come up with some good suggestions.

And then go back to being a rational engineering professional. Hopefully with a great solution to a previously intractable engineering problem.

In posting ideas for brainstorming as Cam Barrett says: ‘It's not about the length of the posts. It's about the passion’.

Thanks Kim T. Gordon for your great article on Creative Brainstorming Techniques and Margot Cairnes for your article on “Being Silly as a way to creativity” in the Engineers Australia magazine.

Japanese Tsunami Disaster
Peter Chan, one of the 80,000 odd readers of these notes, has put together a great pledge for the victims of the Japanese natural disaster. He says: ’The recent natural disaster in Japan has really moved me and prompted me to start a pledge campaign for the victims in Japan. My idea is to ask for website owners to donate part of their pay-per-click incomes to Japanese Red Cross. This pledge is strictly honorary and I do not take money from any one. I have created a blog to track all the participating websites and a pledge logo for website owners to post on their websites’. http://japanreliefpledge.blogspot.com

I don’t know about you; but this is applicable to anyone. Whether it is the Queensland floods, or the NZ Christchurch earthquake disaster or the Japanese Tsunami – every little bit of help is fantastic.

And a real thought-provoking video on our real motivators at work (not money or se-x, I might add)
Thanks to Simon Lucchini (a Fluor Fellow) for this great video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

If you are a manager-type or aspiring to be one – this should change some of your thoughts on the subject of motivation (esp. of engineering professionals).

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues,

Unconventional Wisdom about Management and Power - why some people have it and others don't by Jeffrey Pfeffer (professor of management at Stanford) has some useful tips for engineering professionals. As we have discussed extensively in the past, to ahead in your company and career, it is sadly not enough to be technical competent and sharp. Jeffrey reckons the following elements are critical to career success:

Ambition - you must believe in yourself and where you want to end up
Energy - you must be highly driven and proactive on a minute-by-minute basis striving to make things happen
Focus - prioritise - we all know there are a million tasks to do but you have to focus on the often unpleasant ones that make 'things happen'
Self-knowledge - make decisions on where you are going from paying attention to your personal observations and know-how of what has happened in the past
Confidence - be sure in yourself and don't hesitate to make hard decisions to press ahead
Empathy with your peers - try hard to understand your colleagues, what makes them tick and how to help them
Bulletproof demeanour - tolerate the inevitable conflict that comes from making hard decisions that are effective

Other interesting observations are that we always underestimate people's willingness to help us - from borrowing a cell phone from a stranger to asking for help from a seemingly disinterested shipping employee in expediting a critical piece of equipment for a project. And a topic which is a thorn in the side of many of us Engineering your ambition to forge ahead technically adept engineering types - it is vital to build up personal networks from exercising together, to sending friendly notes and emails, to calling a colleague in a distant city on his or her birthday.

And let's face it - achieving career success is critical to our long term satisfaction as engineers and technicians. What can be more demoralising than being stuck in a job slot - unrecognised and forgotten despite possessing so many additional talents waiting to be exercised and used.

I had a rueful chuckle over the comment from Ronnie Shakes:

I was going to get a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking, and then I thought: What the hell good would that do?

Thanks to George F. McClure of the IEEE for some interesting discussions and Jeffrey Pfeffer, Power - why some people have it and others don't, Harper Business, 2010.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues,

When NASA lost an expensive Mars orbiter (which burnt out descending too quickly) because a Lockheed Martin engineering deparment mistakenly used English units of measurement while NASA used the metric system for a key spacecraft operation, many of us probably sighed and thought of incorrectly configured software and data once again. According to yet another report (Standish), only 32% of software projects are successful with 24% outright failures.

However with the recent win of ‘Watson’, the IBM supercomputer, which/who beat several highly skilled humans on the show, Jeopardy, we probably wondered at the dizzy heights to which software is heading. Software is indisputably being embedded in every device we use today - whether you are in the civil, mechanical, chemical, electronic or electrical engineering worlds. Although I always develop a nervous twitch when I see a new supposedly remarkable software product being unveiled; developing software is slowly becoming quicker and more reliable than ever in the past

Glamour engineering at long last
Software engineering is without doubt one of the glamour professions today with enormous growth prospects. Even in the recent downturn, the need for competent software engineers continued to climb. There has been strong annual growth in software engineers over a decade of 25% (US Bureau of Stats) with only chemical engineers ahead of them in the salary stakes.

Software engineering is growing fast in a variety of areas ranging from the environment, statistics, health sciences, electrical vehicles and renewable energy.

However, the increasing complexity of systems and software requires an engineer with considerably more talent, experience and learning than ever in the past. Hence the desperate need for more competent graduates in this area.

According to a recent IEEE survey, we don’t want uncommunicative geeks
Inevitably, employers aren't necessarily looking for uncommunicative geeks (with '60W suntans'); but talented engineers who can communicate superbly, problem solve and are analytical in their thinking. And who can work in groups and show leadership. And who are connected to the real world. Organisations don't tend to appoint software engineers off the streets these days but someone with good credentials (often based around a good engineering school and some sort of profile and a strong background in the physical, mathematical or engineering sciences).

Most employers agree on one thing. Demonstrated ability to commence and finish a project successfully within a reasonable budget is one key characteristic a budding software engineer needs to demonstrate. The ability to "cut" or write (a colleagues uses a more derogatory term here) a program is only a small part of the skill of being a good software engineer. Other oft-neglected requirements are being to understand exactly what their customer wants and to be able to deliver a product that matches this requirement.

Help wanted but available with SWEBOK
With all the welter of misinformation surrounding what know-how and expertise is required in the software engineering area, there is help in the relatively recent and well structured (and freely available) massive tome of knowledge embodied in the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK at https://www.computer.org/education/bodies-of-knowledge/software-engineering ), presumably modelled on the successful Project Management Book of Knowledge). This gives an overview toolkit to software engineering with different knowledge areas (KAs) ranging from software requirements, design, construction, testing, maintenance, configuration management, engineering management, engineering process, tools and quality.

So what can you do about this ?

• Review the Software Engineering Book of Knowledge
• Embed software engineering in your career or use it more extensively in your area
• Measure future software engineers working with and for you on being able to communicate well, work in a group and finish a project on time and within budget
• Once again, look at chances to apply software engineering competently to your products to add value.
• Look warily at all your new software projects as to whether they are best practice in software engineering.
• Thanks to John R Platt of the IEEE for a thought provoking article.

Hopefully software wins in the race which Rick Cook refers to here:
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.

Once again; thanks so much for the ongoing encouragement from all you fine engineering folk (going on 80,000 worldwide now).

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

Last week, I sighed in horror when I walked into a noisy hot industrial chemical plant and spotted the office-type commercial Ethernet hardware being used (with those weak RJ-45 connectors). Sure – you spend less money and get freely available off-the-shelf components, but you may get more problems than you bargained for. Admittedly this network is apparently still operating happily despite huge vibration, heating, power supply and moisture issues. But the risk is high that you will shortly be faced with public enemy no.1 for data communications - intermittent comms drop outs which are difficult to trace and fix. Industrial Ethernet costs a bit more but gives you a sure-fire assurance of performance.

Ethernet is apparently growing at the rate of 30% per year and is generally the preferred approach these days for industry. Once limited to office type networks, it is extensively used in the industrial industry but one needs to ensure that the industrial Ethernet variety is used with industrial type connectors and equipment rated for industrial temperature ranges, power supply fluctuations, high vibration and moisture ranges.

The good old Seven layer model
As you are probably aware, every communications system is based around the 7 layer OSI Model (Layer 1 - hardware e.g. copper connections/ Layer 2 - Data Link Layer – raw Ethernet frame / Layer 3 - Network Layer – for routing the packets using the IP address / Layer 4 – Transport – for assuring delivery of the packets / Layer 5 – Session / Layer 6 - Presentation / Layer 7 - Application Layer – e.g. http or ftp or Modbus/TCP)
 

Getting into the Hardware
The range of Ethernet at the hardware layer is from 10Base-T (10Mbit/s), 100Base-T (100Mbit/s), to 1 Gigabit/s and now 10 Gigabit/s Ethernet. And as my good colleague – Simon Lucchini at Fluor, noted – make sure your ‘Ethernet run in the field is mainly fibre; copper Ethernet is only used within the equipment rooms. It is very common to have very substantial fibre infrastructure run between instrument equipment rooms (dual 240 core cables)’. Fibre provides optical isolation and immunity from electrical interference.

Switching (you through) at Layer 2
Use industrially hardened switches – generally full duplex switches are the preferred approach. A switch (as opposed to the older hub technology) provides a dedicated segment for every Ethernet node. Ensure the power supplies for the switches are redundant or at least can handle ranges in the supply voltage.

Open Protocols and the Application Layer wars
As far as the other protocols are concerned, use of TCP/IP is a wonderfully open protocol - common to both commercial and industrial systems. IP provides you with routing capability (using the IP addressing) and TCP assures delivery of packets. There are some real time issues with TCP so one can also use UDP for transfer of non-critical repetitive data such as video.

Besides the choice of industrial Ethernet and TCP/IP where things are relatively straightforward - there are still some challenges with battles being fought at the Application layer with different vendors providing similar Ethernet solutions but with different application layer protocols which are incompatible. These offerings include: Modbus/TCP, PROFInet, Foundation Fieldbus HSE, Ethernet/IP which are not directly compatible.

Other necessary elements for your industrial Ethernet system
The other critical elements to consider are network security and network management. Every computer cracker in town wants to get into your network and you need a strong security architecture with workable firewalls and possibly VLANs (a group of devices on different networks that communicate with each other as if they are on the same secure network). Network management is growing in importance in industrial networks and allows you to monitor and maintain a network with useful statistics (e.g. packets lost / traffic intensity on a segment).

Although the various design issues in putting together a robust industrial Ethernet network perhaps seem enormous (esp. in troubleshooting data communications problems), as Benjamin Franklin remarked: Energy and persistence conquer all things.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

I see in a slew of recent newspaper reports that companies are increasingly hiring those technical specialists who have soft skills. To be quite frank with you, the need for engineering professionals to acquire soft skills often sounds like some sort of bizarre cop-out. As we all know, acquiring hard engineering skills and know-how is a tough and drawn out process – not only from studying but from hard won and often painful experience.

However, there is plenty of other evidence in looking at the careers of many successful engineering professionals, that focussing on building strong soft skills can be enormously beneficial to your career and also be a satisfying process. I do find in my day-to-day work that these skills are often ignored resulting in dysfunctional, unproductive and unhappy workplaces.

So while you definitely need to be as sharp as a tack with your engineering expertise, you should still pay careful attention to growing your soft skills especially as you increasingly work as part of a group. Or indeed, part of a virtual group – crossing cultural boundaries between different countries where soft skills are even more vital.

These so-called soft skills include such elements as communicating well with others, problem solving, conflict resolution, leadership, motivating others (including your boss), the ability to work effectively in the group, multi tasking (running with multiple tasks simultaneously), handling stress and the ability to innovate and create.

As you know, life in engineering is never Teflon coated but riddled with ongoing problems and challenges. One of the challenges we have on a day-to-day basis is troubleshooting and fixing the inevitable daily problems that come up and soft skills can be useful here.

Other skills are the ability to write in simple and clear English and communicating the right enthusiasm and attitude to everyone especially when the chips are down. This doesn't mean that you have to be yet another unproductive politician working your way around the company hierarchy, but in seriously adding value to your engineering environment. And naturally, these soft skills fit in well with good project management skills but they do go a lot further.

David Brinkley's comment is so true especially when you think about engineering projects working with limited resources and people who may not fit the requirements properly – here possessing soft skills can be enormously helpful: A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

When it comes to extensive use of CAD-based drawings, I sometimes wonder whether this comment is true: ‘What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance’ (Havelock Ellis). My good sparring partner, Dermot Kennedy (CEO of the firm I&E Systems – systems engineers) will perhaps forgive me for perhaps misquoting him below on an area he is passionate about – fixing our broken drawing systems, with some great suggestions, based on his work over the past 40 years:

Modern control (and related electrical) systems are some of the most complex of man’s works. They deliver economic gain and improved environmental conditions all around us. Their hardware cost follows Moore’s Law ever lower.

A complimentary chapter on Symbols and Equipment numbering from our drawings manual is at the end of this note...
 

Their documentation is growing in size in an effort to describe the complexity. System documentation is so costly and slow that it is usually curtailed by budget and schedule.

Is this surprising when you consider that we still use techniques over 100 years old?

We ‘draw’ circuits and ‘schedule’ cables and ‘write’ documents. To ensure that these all agree with one another we wait until the last one is complete and then ‘check’ them. We have numbering systems for drawings, documents, equipment tags, cables and panels etc. Information is only accessible to those who can navigate this mess.

Normal drawings have the underpinning of scale but electrical and control drawings do not. So the allocation of information to individual sheets is left to tradition; no help with modern systems. An individual item may be partially described on 50 or more drawings and then, as a consequence, when an equipment number is changed the physical change may cost less than 1% of the document revisions. The usual result of this is that the drawings are never kept up to date.

Some control systems perform safety related activities and are subject to a mandatory requirement for accurate information. Traditional documentation is never adequate to show compliance. And the real answer is not to add another check list. We can thus continue with the traditional CAD based ‘hard-wired-everything-locked-in-place’ approach or venture into use of better techniques and software.

An obvious solution (which is mostly ignored) is to build a multi-faceted model of the system – a prototype in virtual space with all the characteristics required of the planned installation. And the activities emulate the real work of building the system:

1. Select the equipment and create the individual components required
2. Locate and assemble them appropriately
3. Connect them together
4. Configure circuits and application code to give the desired functionality
5. Check the end result
6. Now the model can be published to give MTO’s and any printed documentation required for the final implementation

Add me as a friend on Facebook to download chapter two on Symbols and Equipment Numbering from our drawings manual.

Attend a thought provoking debate and presentation (‘Why our drawings systems are broken and what to do about it’) on the best way forward in terms of bringing our drawings systems into the twenty first century. In order to establish credibility, we will use a number of drawing packages to illustrate some of our points with real examples from engineering projects; but I hasten to tell you that we do not endorse them.

The 45 minute web conference is on the 2nd March 2011. Drop This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. a note if you want to be sent further details.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear Colleagues

The ‘pot’ or potentiometer as it is called, is one of the workhorses of electrical and electronic engineering. I believe we can all still remember working with a pot on some sideline design or in a work related application. They have been around a long time. There are more sold than any other form of position sensor. Simple, cheap and small with no real obsolescence problems. So as Mark Howard asks: Why today does every designer look for a non-contact alternative?

Going potty about pots

For those that don't remember clearly - a potentiometer or 'pot' is a three-terminal resistor with a sliding contact that forms an adjustable voltage divider (Thanks Wikipedia). Commonly used to control electrical devices such as volume controls and can be used in a control stick or level indicator or position transducer. As evidenced when my student buddy in an engineering lab tried to control a large electric motor with a potentiometer drawing full the current and it disappeared in a gigantic smouldering bang; they are not used to control significant amounts of power (more likely a watt or less). A potentiometer could be used to control the switching of a Triac to indirectly control the brightness of a lamp.

The Nemesis of pots

Because of perceived problems with reliability (and indeed wear and tear); these days we typically are always on the lookout for non-contact alternatives. Thus pots are not considered uber-sexy any longer. Why the unreliable image ? Pots can be rated for 500,000 cycles and can thus be good for 5 years or more (with linear displacement changes every 5 minutes). There are three main causes of pot failures: vibration, ingress of foreign matter and extreme climatic conditions. With vibration, the pots wiper is normally at the same place most of the time and significant wear occurs producing a flat spot with no electrical response. Extreme environments can produce condensation on the wiper and corrosion.

So in harsh environments one needs to seriously consider alternatives. But for the average application, one should realize that pots are still extraordinarily reliable and will work perfectly.

Be Wary

But if you do need to change to a non-contact approach - be wary (and afraid) ! Besides costing more, non-contact alternatives often produce a digital electrical output. So your entire associated electrical system may need to be redesigned from analog to digital. And then retested and approved. Quite a considerable additional expense! In addition, pots are normally very compact and you may find the non-contact alternative is considerably larger, causing a mechanical re-jig of your system.

A few take away lessons on the 'pot':

• Don't despise older technology - it often gets the task done and is effective
• Marketing often relies on high tech so-called improvements which aren't better than the old and tested approach – often considerably worse
• When you do make changes to your engineering design with a new component; the biggest impact may be on all the associated interfacing equipment.
• Ensure your components are matched to the entire range of the engineering environment.

I hope with my weekly commentary, the following comment from Gertrude Stein is not true ? Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.
Thanks to Mark Howard of Zettlex Ltd for an interesting article., Wikipedia for your information and Rod Elliot for a great informative web site on pots.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

As engineering professionals we are all trained to be logical and rational and rely on proven facts in making decisions. The approach with engineers is to vigorously apply the blowtorch to any concept which is rather nebulous and stick to solid engineering design practice. However as Margot Cairnes, a leadership strategist recently pointed out: ‘This often means being conventional, boring and underperforming (when creating solutions to difficult problems). In a changing world, creativity is essential, not only to keep pace with change but to be at the crest of the wave’.

I am sure you have been in numerous engineering meetings which grind on and on regarding some trivial but critical design issue. Important, perhaps in many cases. But we submerge our creativity under this overwhelming conventional but safe engineering thinking. It is staggering how many brilliant and effective products are out there which were created through creative thinking and “thinking foolishly”. These range from products as varied as the 3M Post it Note, the Kreepy Krauly pool cleaner, the iPod to the ubiquitous telephone.

Here at work, we brainstorm foolishly at times when designing new services or products. Initially my rational engineering mind is irritated and uncomfortable. However, when creative impulses intrude, the crazy content which appeared illegal, unsafe and even dangerous, can, with a more chaotic and lateral vision begin to appear quite stunningly brilliant. The trick, when the ideas are flowing, is to get other people to comment on them and to turn them around and see whether they can be made useful and productive. 

When you are engaged in another meeting examining a difficult problem; be foolish. According to the Entrepeneur magazine, the following framework is recommended:

• Pose an initial question to get the “show on the road”
• Identify a challenge which you want to solve
• Suspend criticism of all ideas that are presented
• Postpone evaluation whilst the ideas are being presented
• Build on others’ ideas in a fast paced manner

Do not risk life and limb, but as the inimitable Steve Jobs said many years ago: ‘Stay hungry, stay foolish.’

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

Dear colleagues

First of all - best wishes for a great 2011 and thanks for reading this. The signs are that this is going to be an excellent year for engineering professionals - no matter where you are in the world, the demand for your services is rapidly increasing. As we have the northern hemisphere in the grip of a ferocious winter, a few thoughts on the technology and engineering of skiing and snowboarding and how it reflects on your engineering work.

On the overall physics, there is little to distinguish skiing and snowboarding. Both rely on converting potential energy (= mgh) to kinetic energy (= m v squared / 2) when swooping down the hill. The principle of movement is based on ice being slippery because pressure melts the ice leaving a thin water layer - no heat is required, nor is there any necessary friction - the reason why extremely cold ice is less slippery (thanks Will Stewart for clarifying this). This forms a thin layer of water which lubricates the bottom of the surface of the snowboard or ski thus allowing those incredible speeds.

However, while the physics is the same, the bio-mechanics of both sports differs dramatically. The skier keeps her centre of mass neatly between the two skis, thus avoiding falls when turning. Whereas the snowboarder, has to be vigilant to avoid his mass centre moving beyond the board's edge (esp. when changing direction). This can end in some horrible falls. Greater speeds are achieved by skiers as they divide their weight across two surfaces (against that of snowboards with the entire body weight on one surface). This generates spectacular speeds of 250km/h for skiers against that of snowboarding at 200km/h (naturally, you would be one of the top performers to achieve these numbers).

Perhaps one safety advantage of snowboarders is tumbling at a high velocity when things go awry. When a tumble does occur, for the snowboarder, as his frame is intact on a single surface (both legs and body locked together tightly on the board), there is not the same chaotic frenzy as for a skier with all four limbs going independently in different directions.

So what does this mean to us as engineering designers ?

Well, as Laura Moncur remarks: We make our gadgets our own by the way that we use them, with or without the permission of the manufacturer.

So while you need to ensure your engineering design is best practice, you need to consider all the possible ways your user is going to misuse it. Sometimes this can be extraordinarily hard to visualise. As Douglas Adams wryly observed (this is my favourite quote btw): A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

Thanks to the Economist (and the readers) for some interesting thoughts on these two great sports.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve