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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 09 February 2010

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 27 January 2010

Dear Colleagues

I like to think I am one - an engineering entrepreneur that is. And vaguely successful. Although, I must confess that when I see the salaries earned by those uber successful engineers in oil and gas, for example, I know that it is arguable in terms of financial success (especially considering the risks I have taken). But I comfort myself with the great satisfaction I get (well, 90% of the time). I delight in engineers and technicians who have set up incredibly successful businesses (but am saddened by those – the majority – who have failed).  In these tough times, I do believe that for our economies to grow we need far more entrepreneurs providing services and products that improve productivity (including safety). The spin-off will be the employment of more people and more opportunities for engineering professionals to practise their skills. Engineers, being highly creative (and making things that are ultimately useful), have an incredible role to play here (as opposed to other disciplines such as lawyers, doctors and accountants).

Becoming an engineering entrepreneur may seem a good idea if you have reached a crossroads or hit a brick wall in your engineering career. Otherwise you may have such a brilliant service or product which you reckon has great possibilities and which tempts you to head out on your own. Importantly, though, becoming an entrepreneur does not necessarily entail striking out solely on your own. You can often do it within your existing company structure – genuine owners of businesses delight in welcoming like-minded engineering professionals to extend their businesses with new products and services (and to weather the risk themselves). However, even here, you will have to take ownership of the risks and ensure your venture works, otherwise you will have your career and credibility seriously weakened. 

Be ruthless about whether it is a feasible product you are proposing. Many companies have not been able to survive as their key products, whilst useful, have simply never been viable business ventures. Oddly enough, what you are contemplating doesn't have to be new or unique (is there such an animal?), but the overall business case has to really work.

Some personal lessons for me are:

As engineering professionals we tend to focus on the technical aspects of the product. This is what gets us excited. However, it is the ‘filthy’ business case on which we need to center our attention – “Can this product or service be sold to make money?” - the overwhelmingly important question before launching an idea. Engineers often neglect the business factors as they are less interesting to us. Sadly, the market will not beat a path to your door because ‘you have designed a better rat/mouse trap’. Ideas are a penny a dozen - it is the business strategy and plan that is critical. Most engineers and technicians can sketch out ideas with potential. 99.999%, however, won’t be able to put them into action. As a starting point you must ensure that your business is closely aligned to your engineering skills and passion. You will have built up a tremendous skill-base, knowledge and indeed contacts over your engineering years in a particular field – a great leverage.

It is also a myth that by setting up a business, you end up getting rid of your ghastly boss. In fact, you end up with many, many more bosses (also known as clients). And they may not be that pleasant to deal with either. So don’t use this as your motivation for setting up a new business.

It is good idea to take an idea which is red hot and let it boil for a few months. Kick it to death as many times as you can by getting other people’s opinions (these will often be disinterested or negative). If it survives 6 months of this and you remain enthusiastic about its strength as a business case it may mean it has “a 30% chance” of success.

A business plan defining your product and strategy is absolutely essential. And it should fit on a single sheet of paper with all the key thoughts worked through and built in here. I believe that the 150 page business plans have long since disappeared – your plan must be succinct, simple and convincing. If you can’t explain simply what you are doing in a few words to your grandmother, it is probably going to be difficult to make it work. Items to be included in your business plan include; those aspects of the product that are unique, why you will be able to sell it, who your competitors are,  the costs and predicted revenue, the cash available to fund the venture,  how long it will take to develop the product, the members of your team, an outline of the operations and admin issues and finally, a simple implementation check list with dates.

Initially, try to finance the product yourself and demonstrate that it is workable and bringing in a solid profitability before going to others for funding. Borrowing money from others or getting partners onboard, when the product hasn’t been proven, is fraught with danger. Having a proven business operating before you approach partners or venture capitalists (if there are any around these days), gives you considerable leverage in negotiations for more money or partners in selling it in other markets.

Put overwhelming effort into your marketing and sales. Persistent communication of your idea to prospects for your products are essential. Engineers often shy away from this. If you don’t have their interest and no partners who can take this role on; seriously reconsider the viability of setting up a business.

Once you have your product out in the marketplace, you have to listen carefully. You may find that you have to change your strategy considerably as the market might want something else. Unless you are superhuman and highly attuned to the market, it is unlikely your original idea will be what you eventually sell. Don’t be obsessed with your particular product or service - listen to the requirements of the market. And remember every day; re-assess what you are doing to ensure it is aligned with the needs of the marketplace. Be quick to re-invent yourself if necessary in order to match up with the changing needs in the marketplace.

It is an extremely lonely mission setting up your own business. Often you are confronted by severe indifference with no one to talk to (apart from your long suffering life-partner who may be a bit underwhelmed by your day-to-day problems). Make sure you have oodles of support from your life-partner and that she or he is absolutely committed.

Even when you have a highly successful business, it takes aeons to see the first dollars come in. Often you end up with two years of virtually no income as you build up the business. Can you cope with this and more importantly can your personal life cope with this? Cash flow is always a challenging animal to deal with, but it is always king in business.

And an issue I have tended to scorn in the past (to my detriment), is the operational and administrative side of running the business. You have to put in place systems to deliver your product or service easily and effectively, with a high and continuing level of quality and profitably. Oddly enough neglect of these issues can cripple your business. One of the frustrations of entrepreneurs comes with expansion. Employing more people costs more and with systems in place lacking effectiveness a reduction in product quality can result. You may find that your profitability is considerably less too, compared with when you were the sole employee.

You do need passion and persistence. Persistence is critical as you will get “kicked in the teeth” at least a dozen times a day in the course of running the business.

There is no doubt, that it is enormously satisfying as an engineer to run one’s own business, bring new products and services to the market and take control of one’s own destiny. I continue to see so many vibrant engineering businesses opening up that are absolutely inspirational. These range from consulting, to software and hardware development, to electronic product development, to education, to construction and shipbuilding.

When considering entrepreneurial ventures, as the famous General Patton counselled:

‘Take calculated risks. These are quite different from being rash.’

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 19 January 2010

Dear Colleagues

Thanks for the flood of responses to the engineering quiz. Full answers are below and we would like to congratulate our winners:

Mr Patrick Richards
Mr Brett Dixon
Mr Mike Jones

(Drawn from all the correct submissions). All others with correct answers will be offered an e-book of their choice. Well done everyone.

Wanted: Green Engineers and Technicians

Some of you have tartly suggested over the past few years, that it would be gratifying to receive some convincing evidence that climate change is actually caused by man. Unfortunately I am not in the position to provide this (due to my lack of knowledge in the area), but what is becoming very clear is the need for more engineering practitioners focusing on the matter of climate change. Massive commitments have been made by the larger economies to address the issue, but there are now simply not enough engineering professionals to implement these radically new systems – many of which are completely different to those used in the past.

The use of coal is expected to double by 2030. In response some pretty serious carbon capture and storage technologies are required with enormously innovative geological surveying, mining, pipelining, automation and chemical engineering needed. There are obviously mixed feelings about the nuclear industry, but many governments have decided to go ahead here, and both outstanding engineering professionals and independent regulators (to ensure safety and to protect the public) are required. Renewable energy with solar and wind energy, is perhaps better understood (but whose need is perhaps not quite as pressing as carbon capture and nuclear technologies - with their enormous concentrated capital investments). Renewable energy, however, can provide an enormous number of jobs and can be extended on a vast scale (by retrofitting homes for greater energy efficiency, for example). And naturally, all engineering design and installation today requires deep thought given to the issues of sustainability, energy efficiency and minimisation of emissions.

For the first time that I can recall, engineering is in the unique position of being perfectly aligned with the environmental movement with its focus on “saving the world” and with engineers as the “good guys”. Technology will prove itself as one of the keys to dealing with the problem of climate change (otherwise we must return to subsistence living – an unlikely option).

What do we need to do?

* Drive your governments and bureaucrats to more aggressively fund research in energy engineering. This will ensure the emergence of practical, useful technologies which, as engineering professionals, we can apply.
* Convince laid off engineers and technicians or those in more somnolent areas (e.g. missile engineers) to take up green technology skills.
* Tell the world (particularly environmental campaigners and politicians), that engineers can actually “save the world”. Inform them that through the application of new technologies; emissions can be reduced, efficient energy systems designed and carbon captured effectively.
* Look at how you can skill yourself up in these new green areas to build your career and “help your world”

To rework a comment from The Economist a little:”…the best thing a bright young person can do to help fix the climate change problem is to get an education in engineering”.

Thanks to the Economist (The World in 2010) for their valuable references.

The Quiz

Q1. If the resistance of a circuit is 20 Ohms and the voltage across it is 100 Volts, what is the current?
A1. V= I * R; thus 5 amperes (or 5A)

Q2. What is the key feature of the HART protocol?

A2. It allows for bidirectional digital communications superimposed over a standard 4-20mA loop, thus providing for querying of data and diagnostic information and sending configuration data to the instrument.

 Q3. Why is the 4-20mA instrumentation standard so useful?
A3. It is an internationally recognised standard. With at least 4mA always flowing in the loop (with ability to power instruments on the same pair of wires), simplified wiring is possible. Loop resistance does not make a major impact. In addition, with a minimum value of 4mA, it can indicate a broken link.

 Q4. In terms of stability, what is the purpose of the derivative term in PID control?
A4. Particularly with loops with significant process lags (such as temperature loops), the addition of the derivative term provides for increased stability in the overall loop operation.

Q5. What is the difference between these two engineering instruments below?

(a)      (b) 
A5. (a) is a slide rule using for calculations (mainly used prior to the mid seventies) while (b) is a vernier caliper for measurement of internal and external distances and depths

Q6. A pump with a low initial cost and low maintenance cost is (select one):
Gear Pump / bucket pump / double acting piston pump / centrifugal pump
A6. Centrifugal pump.

Q7. A feeler gauge is used for measuring the (select one):

Thickness of plates / clearance between mating parts / pitch of screw threads /  radius of curvature.
A7. Clearance between mating parts

Thanks for all your submissions.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

The winners of the quiz were: Mr Patrick Richards, Mr Brett Dixon and Mr Mike Jones. Congratulations and thanks to all those who submitted answers. The suggested answers follow each question – please note that we accepted a wide range of answers provided they were reasonable.

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 13 January 2010

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Written by: Quintus Potgieter

Category: Industry

Published: 09 December 2016

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 21 December 2009

Dear colleagues

There is so much to celebrate this week – Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Solstice or simply the imminent New Year. We, at IDC, would like to wish you everything of the best for the remainder of this year. We hope you find some time for a well-earned break before a prosperous 2010. (My wife and I kicked off the holiday season amongst the vines and alongside the surf in the south western corner of Western Australia - where the Great Southern and Indian Oceans meet).

I am very grateful for your wonderful support over the past four years. We now have 120,000 engineers and technicians throughout the world receiving this newsletter. 

Here is one last, but brief comment for 2009, on a sometimes vexing, but very interesting topic.
 
Energize to Trip

Being from a traditional industrial automation background, I have always believed that de-energize to trip is the name of the game. One only needs to think of the emergency stop push button for a motor. The idea is that if the emergency push button is pressed or the associated control cable is broken, then the motor will be de-energized. No “if’s or buts”. Zero power! And thus safe!

But our Safety Controls guru (read his many books and articles), Dave Macdonald, gently chided me on Friday on the topic of de-energize to trip. His discussion below outlines another important option. From a simply intuitive point of view, as he pointed out patiently, when there is a failure, de-energize to trip is certainly not an option for a Jumbo 747, with 500 passengers on-board, 32,000 feet up in the sky.

Why, then, do we bother to learn about de-energize or energize to trip? Knowing the difference and their applications are vital, however, particularly with technology changes and the importance of keeping up with current best practice in the engineering world. So read on. What follows is a tight little tutorial which Dave has written with some vigour:

Safety instrumented systems protect a vast range of processes and machines against hazardous conditions. They perform safety instrumented functions (SIFs) intended to bring the operations to a safe state. The traditional and well proven approach to designing the circuits and device arrangements for any SIF is to adopt inherently fail-safe design principles which lead to a predominance of “safe failure” modes over the undesirable “dangerous failure” modes.

The principle of “de-energize to trip” (or DTT) ensures that for most devices the loss of circuit integrity through wire breaks or dry contacts or the loss of motive power in actuators should lead to the “safe state” of the process as soon as the fault occurs, even though the process itself was not in a hazardous condition at the time. For example, if you break the connection to a solenoid valve on an air-to-open spring loaded shut off valve it will snap shut; annoying the boss, but not risking any lives! These “spurious trips” are accepted as the price of fail-safe design unless the hazards or the financial losses created by spurious trips exceed the benefits to safety integrity. Then most designers will resort to redundancy for availability (“2 out of 2” or “2 out of 3”  voting) if costs are justified for the application.

However, there are some cases where DTT principles are difficult to implement or justify. Energize-to-trip or ETT principles may then be more appropriate, despite their apparent risk of failure due to undetected circuit breaks or power failures. Fire and gas protection systems on offshore installations or in public buildings are one example where circuit breaks would lead to sudden deluges that would be just as hazardous as a fire. Situations where large numbers of Emergency Stops are used, such as for aircraft refueling points, may also justify ETT techniques because of the risk of frequent circuit breakages in the field, resulting in too many spurious trips.

Energize to trip is not as silly as it may seem because in modern SIS practice the two biggest drawbacks of ETT can be easily overcome. Line monitoring by low-power pulsing allows for continuous detection of circuit continuity on both input and output channels - giving alarm and response actions as soon as circuit failure occurs. No-break power systems have greater capacity than ever before and an important point to note about ETT systems is that they consume far less power if the inputs and outputs are de-energized most of the time. Hence battery back-up duration is greatly extended over continuously energized DTT designs; another reason for their use in fire and gas systems.

No-one would expect to build a relay-based logic solver stage on ETT principles, but this issue falls away as the majority of SIS logic solvers are now based on safety-certified PLCs which in turn bring greater diagnostic capabilities for sensing malfunctions and circuit breaks in the input and output field devices. IEC standard 61511 (Functional safety – Safety instrumented systems for the process industry sector) does not preclude the use of ETT principles where the user decides that this is justified, but does not offer any significant advice on the subject.

The technical obstacles to using ETT methods, therefore, have fallen away, but the basic principle of simplicity dictates that DTT principles are always going to be the first choice until a practical obstacle or a severe cost penalty arises.

Thanks very much, Dave, for an excellent article. Most appreciated. Any feedback will be published.

Preferably not, but as John Galbraith, the famous economist, remarked ruefully:

“If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error”.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 16 December 2009

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 09 December 2009

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 02 December 2009

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 25 November 2009

Dear colleagues,

In 1902 CY O’Connor, one of Australia’s greatest engineers, constructed the longest pipeline in the world. It was designed to carry water from Perth to the desperately dry goldfields. During the final stages of its commissioning the project faced some problems. CY O’Connor suffered some vicious criticism before committing suicide – he rode his horse into the surf in Fremantle. Doubts were cast on whether the pipeline would work and there were unfounded rumours that he was receiving kickbacks from contractors. His only fault was that he was a perfectionist and brilliant. The pipeline opened shortly after his death and operated flawlessly. It is still operating as a lifeline to the region a hundred years later.

I am not suggesting that anyone will get this despondent. But let’s face it, we all enjoy ups and have to endure some enormous downs. Inevitably there are times, through an engineering career, when things can get extraordinarily difficult – a natural cycle. What we have to guard against, however, are feelings of being overwhelmed - when the cycle fails to move on and where work responsibility is taken too personally. The fallout includes engineering without rewards and a negative impact on our personal lives too. The likely manifestation at work (and at home) includes; procrastination, isolation, apathy, disinterest and bitterness.

Engineering is particularly tough: We are dealing with real equipment, which has a finite life time, and our designs can have unpredictable results because they take on the natural world. Furthermore, we have to deal with the financial and management types who insist on technical compromise. We often have to limp along “making do” with older or cheaper equipment.

 Some suggestions to avoid self-sabotage:
1. Keep your mind on your goals – engineering career and personal ones.
2. Stay firmly focused on the task at hand and in getting it finished.
3. Stick to your guns (despite the naysayers) if your engineering research indicates that you are right with a design or project.
4. Associate with positive engineers and technicians at all times, whenever possible.  Avoid those who are negative and delight in failure.
5. Celebrate your personal successes and those of your closest colleagues.
6. Build your personal support networks. They will be essential when things are tough.
7. Support your colleagues when they are having a bad run.
8. Persist through the tough engineering times – take one step at a time and keep a cool head when everyone else is losing theirs.
9. Watch out for the hidden impacts on your life and keep yourself healthy and fit.

There is a poem that travels with me wherever I am in the world. I picked it up at some bookshop in London in the early nineties and it still motivates me. An extract:

When things go wrong as they sometimes will
When the road you’re trudging seems all up hill
……
And you want to smile but you have to sigh
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.
…..
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit
It’s when things seem worse that you mustn’t quit.

Richard Denny

yours in engineering learning

Steve
 

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 18 November 2009

Dear Colleagues

You’ve just won a great contract but have to work in a team. Great, a technical challenge, but in groups! As engineering professionals this is not our best scenario. You may be outgoing and extroverted, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that you have good team interaction skills. Engineering projects today, however, are increasingly complex and need a team to succeed.

Teams are brought together for specific projects, with some of the group often operating out of offices oceans apart. Once the project is completed the team breaks up. Web based collaborative techniques (such as web conferencing) are making the interface between different groups seamless - one of the new buzzwords is the ‘virtual team’. An outstanding engineering team, including skilled design engineers from around the world, has a higher probability of getting an innovative product, of a high quality, to the market quickly and successfully. It is rare today to see a single engineer developing a product and getting it to market on his/her own.

Operating in a team requires many soft skills such as consensus building and co-operation. The added difficulty is the successful use of these skills with men and women from different cultural backgrounds. This is challenging, but encourages diversity of thought. Some even believe that in the past, with the predominantly all white, male engineer, products were compromised through the lack of consideration of size, weight or strength differentials, for example in women and children.

Personally, I have been on many unsuccessful team projects. I now know that if one can harness the full power of the team effectively, from its inception, great results can be generated quickly. This sort of team becomes iconic – one that everyone talks about for years. Remember, you can’t simply tell everyone to work as a team and assume they will work happily and harmoniously together. Practices and objectives can differ quite significantly between different team members and cause problems. Cost overruns, poor quality products and services and significant delays often result when a project team crashes and burns.

A few suggested ways to make your engineering team really work well (please send me your suggestions so that I can publish them):

Ensure outstanding leadership of the team. This is surely the most important (and often neglected area). A traditional leader, perhaps, but someone who is also enthusiastic, ensures everyone in the team knows everyone else, glues everyone together, extracts every ounce of ability from the team members and gives an overall vision of where the team is heading. The leader should handle the frequent setbacks with a Churchillian resolve to keep “fighting on the beaches” until the job has reached completion. Mediation of the inevitable disputes is critical and manageable with a  wise, long term approach. Finally, some careful management is required to help the team navigate the trade-off between: as a team “you sink or swim together” against “every team member must be held accountable for their tasks”.

Drive deadlines hard. Team members must be clear about deadlines well before they occur and understand the importance of meeting these. Support should be provided in order to meet the deadlines.

Plan practically and hard. Detailed, practical plans are essential. These need to be understood and agreed upon by all team members and the resource availability clarified (watch out for writing software!).

Prioritize and compromise. All plans for the individual groups must fit together. Where problems with resources arise, priorities must be quickly revised and compromises made and clearly communicated.

Educate, train and keep improving. Team members (and the leader) should identify the strengths and weaknesses of everyone and where necessary provide mutual support. Identify the skills each person brings to the team and use these. Keep improving the team members’ know-how.

Communicate aggressively. Ensure everyone across the group is aware of the status of the project at all times – no matter how painful. Break down the silo mentality and ensure everyone communicates openly and often about how his/her particular part of the project is developing. Interaction between team members is vital to success.
Involve the client. Whether an internal company member or an outside party, the client must be constantly updated regarding the project progress – particularly when design compromises are made. Due to contractual issues, the client may be less than enthused with giving any tacit support, but listen carefully - this can be helpful.

Don’t take short cuts which compromise quality. Looking for improved ways of doing a job is positive. In the drive to finish the job quickly, however, short cuts may seriously undermine the quality or final product performance. It is best to do the hard yards.

Think of the other person before yourself.  Try and understand the difficulties and challenges the other team members have. Provide them with thoughtful and unsolicited support as in any good partnership. This should not be your intention, but the reverse is likely to occur if you need help.

Cut out the rot quickly. When things go wrong or a team member is not playing ball; face up to the particular problem and deal with it quickly. Without quick intervention problems often spread and can impact on everyone in the team. The leader needs to counsel the disaffected team member, get him/her back on track or moved to other activities.

Nurture your team. As both a leader and team member, look after your team. This can be done through education, support and training. Help with problem solving difficulties. And whilst avoiding the “jolly hockey sticks” mentality, build up the esprit de corps and morale with positive activities. A team is a delicate thing and needs constant attention.

Face up to contractual issues quickly. If there is a variation developing, because of some team development or a client requesting change; communicate this to everyone immediately. Watch for team irritation and provide counselling where necessary. Ensure the client is apprised of the costs or project changes as soon as possible.

Measure – measure – measure. Whether you are the leader or a team member, track your progress in the project in terms of costs and time and obviously the real progress of the product or project.

A positive team experience means that you will be in even better shape for the next team project.

Two great quotations this week:

“To succeed as a team is to hold all of the members accountable for their expertise.”
Mitchell Caplan, CEO, E*Trade Group Inc.

“Players win games, teams win championships.” Bill Taylor

Thanks to Catherine S. McGowan of the IEEE for her interesting article  which served as a timely inspiration for me.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 11 November 2009

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 04 November 2009

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 28 October 2009

Dear Colleagues

Every now and again, one gets a handsome return for your tax dollars (thank you America). If you are working in renewable energy or energy systems, there is a complimentary and brilliant program (Homer) you have to add to your armoury (even if you are only mildly associated with energy systems). See the end of the newsletter for further details (no, I am not selling anything – courtesy of the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory).

I drank four coffees at midnight last night while contemplating an interesting article by Peggy Hutcheson of the IEEE (thanks Peggy) on keeping yourself competitive. Contemplate, for just two minutes, where you are going with your career and what you want out of life. Work is, after all, a large chunk of your life. In your contemplation consider the following 3 areas: Your market, your brand and your legacy.

Your market
Keep an eye on your skills. Unfortunately they (esp. in some IT areas) are being commoditised at an alarming rate and are being shipped off to lower cost countries. A hardened veteran at Cisco made the following comment regarding their strategy in developing new areas of business in response to increasing competition: “Where there’s mystery, there’s margin”. This applies to all of us. Where we fear to tread is where we have to go in terms of career development. Currently job markets which are growing strongly include; security (software/hardware/process), project management, green energy and other environmental markets, virtual communication products and processes, bio-engineering and biomedical, infrastructure development (the stimulus packages) and industrial automation. By comparison, traditional electronics design is only growing in niche areas (where it is going gangbusters mind you, but to find these areas and sustain them….).

Small and medium sized businesses (including units within large companies) offer the greatest opportunities for work. The more entrepreneurial ones can be risky due to funding constraints though.

Review the way you approach your job. Update yourself with fresh new approaches and technologies. Apparently the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again – so avoid this. To think outside the box requires you to continuously educate yourself by talking to your peers, reading, reviewing new technologies and approaches, attending courses and ultimately experimenting with new approaches (many may fail, but persist with others). This will keep you from doing the same old thing again and again.

Thy Brand
You are the product you offer your employer. Think about what you really enjoy doing at work. Ensure your deep rooted areas of satisfaction in your work are aligned with the work you are actually doing. And ensure you come across as someone who is outstanding and leading edge in your career, someone making a significant contribution. Show passion and enthusiasm (yes – I use this word with engineering professionals) in all that you do. And be a valuable mentor to your younger colleagues.

Thy Legacy
An odd comment (especially if you are only mid way through your career), but how do you want to be remembered in your career? How do others talk about your contribution to engineering and the firm now? And on this point, tempting as it is to get involved; always avoid the good old office politics and back-stabbing, “who stuffed what up when?”. Always focus on the positives. One of the top electrical and control engineers I have ever known would wander away when office gossip began, particularly when it involved the criticism of someone in relation to a disastrous project. He may have been within his rights to join in as he always did an outstanding design job, even uncomplainingly and successfully picking up and reworking failed projects. He showed enormous integrity by not partaking in the character assassinations. Even though he is now in his late sixties, he is still being pursued by a dozen firms to do projects for them. The engineering professionals that leave great legacies (and are still in demand) are those that show enormous enthusiasm, positive leadership, pioneer new approaches and technologies and are able to smoothly adapt to the daily challenges in engineering (these can range from: “Boss, I broke it – what do I do now?” to “Our key engineering supplier has gone bust – we need to urgently rework our production line today”) and business.

Remember, as Phil Crosby remarked: Very few of the great leaders ever get through their careers without failing, sometimes dramatically.

Homer software download

HOMER, the micropower and energy optimization model, helps you design off-grid and grid-connected systems. You can use HOMER to perform analyses to explore a wide range of design questions:
* Which technologies are most cost-effective?
* What size should components be?
* What happens to the project’s economics if costs or loads change?
* Is the renewable resource adequate?
HOMER’s optimization and sensitivity analysis capabilities help you answer these difficult questions.

Home page (for downloading): http://homerenergy.com/

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 21 October 2009

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 14 October 2009

Dear Colleagues

We are flooded on a daily basis with too much data and because we are in such a hurry we often don’t verify the truth of an assertion. This was brought home to me yesterday with the following exchange about damage to an aircraft (shown in the photograph below). An expert confirmed that the damage was created by a lightning strike and then made some interesting comments about aircraft and lightning.

Apparently an American Airline pilot took the photograph after the plane had suffered a lightning strike. One can see significant damage – a large hole burnt into the cockpit. The associated article goes on to say that lightning regularly strikes aircraft – the odds are that every airplane will be hit once a year. Lightning, however, has not directly caused a crash (at least in the USA) in more than 40 years. When a plane is hit, the lightning bolt merely flows along the highly conductive aluminium skin of the plane. However, 40 years ago there was a crash due to lightning: A Boeing 707, carrying 81 passengers, was struck causing the fuel vapour in a tank to ignite and explode. Systems were put in place, as a result, to prevent this from happening. In addition, all aircrafts’ electrical and electronic systems protect electrical currents from lightning damage.
 
But the real story and the facts....

Although the picture does represent real damage (no photoshopping here), it occurred on the ground and had nothing to do with lightning. It resulted from a cockpit fire that burned through the skin of the aircraft after external power was applied in preparation for a flight. Having looked at the pictures, one engineer - working in the area of lightning - remarked, despite the lightning assertions, that he was dubious as only an unusually powerful lightning strike could melt that much aluminium alloy. Furthermore, there should have been some distortion around the hole due to the speed of travel through the air and lightning’s electromagnetic forces. (Other photographs can be found on the link below).
 
So a few suggestions in your engineering work:
 
1. Check out anecdotal information, otherwise file it away as untested.
2. Trace and audit any data which you suspect is second hand - it may have been copied from another source and contain inaccuracies.
3. Use the ‘common sense’ test – this will quickly eliminate the faulty data or statement (as the airplane story indicates).
4. Be suspicious of any data or assumptions which appear to be ‘too clean’, predictable, smooth, spherical - nature is unfortunately unpredictable, jagged and bumpy.
5. Apply some quick calculation tests to your newly acquired data to see if it does fit

In the worse case, where the system is ‘infected’ with faulty data or assumptions, ensure you own up quickly and let everyone know so it can be rectified - this is the sign of a true professional - being honest about your mistakes.
 
Remember that in nature, as the venerable Mark Twain once observed with some exasperation: “Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.”
 
Those of you who want to view the pictures in more detail should go to:

http://www.snopes.com/photos/airplane/lightning.asp (the source of my ideas for this blog, for which I am grateful)
 
Yours in engineering learning

Steve

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 07 October 2009

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 30 September 2009

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 24 September 2009

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 16 September 2009

Dear Colleagues

We are delighted to announce that this week we have become an IEEE Education Partner. As you probably know, the IEEE is the world's leading professional association for the advancement of technology and has over 360,000 members throughout the world.

We have also produced a number of complimentary books over the past few months, including; Greatest Engineering Disasters, Crazy Inventors, Engineering Careers for 2009, Crazy Inventions, Impossible Engineering Jobs, Job Interviews and Technical Writing. See the bottom of this newsletter for details.

Being a bit of a cynic, I don’t have many engineering heroes. The inspirational engineer, Andy Grove (former chief of Intel, the microchip maker), however, must surely be one of them. He wrote a well known book entitled; “Only the paranoid survive”, reflecting on the difficulties in surviving and growing in business.

Andy Grove was a poverty stricken refugee from Hungary. He attended New York’s City College and then gained his doctorate in engineering from the University of California, at Berkeley. A book he wrote at the time - on semiconductors - is still a standard text. He then joined Fairchild Semiconductor, where he became the protégé of Robert Noyce (co-inventor of the integrated circuit) and Gordon Moore (the proponent of the law which states that the amount of computing power available at a given price doubles every 18 months). He joined them after they founded Intel in 1968. He became CEO in 1987 and finished off as chairman in 2004. During Andy’s reign, Intel was considered, for a time, the most valuable company in the world.

Why should we bother about Andy Grove? Well; I believe no matter whether you are a manager, engineer, technician or tradesperson, he has some important lessons for our careers and businesses. Although he is an outstanding engineer, he will be remembered as a daring businessman who applied engineering to business with incredible success.

Andy felt that every firm would be confronted, at least once, with the perfect storm -where internal and external forces conspire to make the existing business unviable. In a word; if something isn’t done quickly with your business, you are “busted”. This is probably true of our careers as well as our businesses. In Intel’s case, their core business was in manufacturing memory chips. The prices, however, had fallen to such an extent (with Japanese competitors driving them down) that it was uneconomic to produce them. The entire company (and indeed the two key founders) couldn’t break from the memory chip business. But Andy Grove decided to ‘bet the company’ on microprocessors and change what they were doing. This not only saved the company, but transformed the industry, driving (amongst other things) the low cost ubiquitous PC.

His second critical decision was to sell microprocessors directly to consumers rather than through the computer makers, as Intel had been doing. You may vaguely recall the ‘Intel Inside’ campaign. This drove the computer makers into an unhappy frenzy, but the Pentium chip ended up being a best seller. Some of you may also recall the minor flaw in the Pentium for certain mathematical calculations. Downplaying the problem was a major PR disaster for Intel; costing them a half billion dollars. Andy Grove reckoned, though, that this episode actually ended up supporting Intel’s transformation. He believed it resulted in the dramatically improved quality of manufacturing and acted as ballast against a similar occurrence. But overall, when Intel turned from a component maker into a consumer brand, it was a stroke of genius.

Andy felt that his early experiences as an undergraduate student at City College shaped his ideas in life and business. Hard work was rewarded and students and professors were equally treated. Questioning everything was encouraged. He felt, however, that his first job at Fairchild was a disaster. He felt that the company’s corporate culture was dysfunctional, elitist, backstabbing and lax. Senior executives strolled into the office late; whereas blue collar workers were fired for the slightest transgression. At Intel, he created a highly disciplined environment which attracted the best and rewarded results - with no double standards.

(As an aside and somewhat controversially, he feels that today, companies should use the patents they are granted rather than sitting on them.)

So what are some of the lessons from Andy Grove?

* Ensure that you watch for the ‘point of inflection’ in your business and career. This is the time to change what you do – particularly if it is proving uneconomic. Research carefully what the market is doing and then ‘jump ship’ as far as your current product and service is concerned. This is certainly what we have done in moving holus bolus into online web conferencing and production of e-courses - supplementing our old traditional methods of course presentation.

* Hard work, discipline and rewarding results in business (and indeed life) still generate enormous satisfaction. (Although one would question this with the travails of Wall St over the past few years).

* Encouraging a culture of questioning everything and treating everyone fairly is still a key to success for business

* A high degree of intensive knowledge and expertise is so absolutely vital in building a great business.

* Never accept the status quo, but concentrate on being a maverick in industry doing things differently and always questioning what you are doing.

* When things go wrong, it is best to ‘come clean’ soonest and use this as an opportunity to improve your processes and business

In this massively information rich and confused world, surely William S. Burroughs comment is valid: “A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.”

Thanks to the Economist and Dr Andy Grove’s book: “Only the Paranoid survive” for reference sources.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 11 September 2009

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 07 September 2009

From: Kevin Kelly and Coleambally Irrigation Co-operative Limited

Some interesting comments from Kevin Kelly

Thanks very much for your thoughful commentary and insight here, Kev.

______________________________________________________________

We were involved at the leading edge and have spent a bit of time at the bleeding edge implementing irrigation open channel flow measurement. Thankfully the technology has been retained in Australia.

 Regards,

Kevin.

Steve,
As always, interesting  to read your latest thoughts.
 
The leading edge is where the creative juices flow, where ideas are created, where those  who are a little eccentric imagine how things could be better for all of us. Where those who do not know that it can’t be done; go ahead and do it because they were not aware that it could not be done. Ideas are freely exchanged with those who share a passion for new knowledge.
 
Just a short distance behind the leading edge is the bleeding edge. This is where the practical, technical people  try to do the things, that now can be done. Prototyping, product testing and development require clever people who enjoy their work. Tweaking, fiddling, adjusting and making things work. Lots of fun, lots of grief, lots of learning.
 
Back behind the bleeding edge is the “Feeding Edge”. Where the marketing consultants, lawyers, contract patent attorneys and others who feed off the innovators;  accumulate and feed and grow big and  fat. No new ideas created here. Lots of theft of intellectual property, industrial espionage and buying up struggling start-ups. There is lots of production of product by those at this level but also lots of secrecy and protection of turf. Many big USA companies inhabit the “Feeding Edge”.
 
Perhaps we should ask ourselves,
 
 “Why is there a Bleeding Edge?”

Kevin

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 02 September 2009

Dear Colleagues

One of the joys of an engineer is the opportunity to work on cutting edge projects – particularly when you are leading the way. Another is working on a ‘greenfield’ site - starting something completely new (instead of salvaging a failing project begun by others). These opportunities, however, are very rare these days. More commonly we tend to be involved in either tacking on an additional facility to an existing site or simply doing some small improvement to an existing product design. Particularly now, with companies being somewhat risk-averse.

As engineers we dream of bringing something technically revolutionary to the market and changing the tide of human events - truly fulfilling our ambitions as engineering professionals. You only need to think of Marconi with radio or Steve Jobs with the Apple microcomputer to envy the satisfaction they must have felt when achieving these engineering wins. Another couple who come to mind are; Stephenson with the Rocket steam engine and Vint Cerf, the father of the internet (who co-developed TCP/IP).

But picking technical winners is an exceptionally brutal business. Technology forecasting is fraught with disaster. One only needs to think of some of the debacles for the dream bubble to burst. Remember the huge sun-reflecting satellites which were to bring light to the dark parts of the earth (NASA forecast that this would be achieved by the mid ‘70’s); or human cloning by 1985, or newspapers delivered by fax by 1978, or superconductors being a billion dollar business by 1975, and, interestingly, the internal combustion engine being dead as a dodo by 1980.

Why technical forecasts fail

Why most forecasts fail may be as a result of the tendency to get swamped by the sheer technology wizardry. We make the assumption that this must be the “next great thing”. This is particularly dangerous when we see people clamouring to adopt it. I shudder when I think how the media jumped onto the Internet with overwhelming enthusiasm in the late nineties with the truly spectacular juggernaut that formed here. We are all familiar with that crash. Often new forecasts are reruns of earlier ones. Or are simply fads which everyone eagerly adopts with no real economic or technical logic.

On the other hand, new technologies are often simply delayed because everyone has invested so much in the existing ones. This slows down new innovative products being introduced - think of Microsoft Windows, for example.

Unexpected “disruptive technologies” can shorten life cycles of numerous products. One only needs to think of solid-state technology which rapidly knocked out electronic valves in short order.

A market tipping one way or another is often difficult to predict – a great example here is Sony Betamax (surely, technically the superior product) being overtaken after a long 30 year war of attrition by VHS video tapes.

Thus - don’t be an engineering pioneer

My take on all this is this: It is extremely dangerous to be the pioneer in any field. If you look at the history of technology, there is no doubt that we admire the technology pioneers (and in many cases they are remembered) – whether it was for the first steam engine, automobile, radio, radar, microcomputer, internet or spreadsheet. However, most of these pioneers failed to have much commercial (and often outright technical) success with their products. They were often superseded by others who refined these pioneering efforts. You only need to look at the most recent example here (and I know you will groan when I mention his name); Steve Jobs and the iPod. For years there were hundreds of iPod equivalents before Jobs refined the concept and made it frighteningly successful. The same thing happened with spreadsheets (remember VisiCalc) invented by Dan Bricklin. These were replaced shortly afterwards by the Microsoft Excel as the de facto standard. Similarly, with the internet. The initial pioneers have been swamped by a flood of very successful companies ranging from Google to Microsoft who apply this technology so very successfully. The same applies to Dell Computers. Steve Dell tried the pioneering route, but after severe losses rapidly backed off allowing others to take this dangerous lead. He still does exceptionally well using this approach (being well behind the “bleeding edge”).

Some brave pioneers do reach the summit, with their perfect products; but mostly they arrive breathless at base camp and have to retreat, a little worse for wear.

In conclusion then

My thesis is this: Being a pioneer can be wonderfully satisfying, but, more often than not, the result is lonely and can be financially defeating. By all means watch the cutting edge developments. But come in later, with a great product which makes sound business sense and refines the pioneering technology. This will inevitably be after the pioneers have launched their products with all their foibles and problems and left the stage battered and bruised, There is so much inertia in the market place that you will have time in which to study the trends of the pioneering products and launch your success story (which may be a tiny refinement of the initial successful product). Doubtless, you won’t do as well as there will be a range of competitors coming in at the same time as you; but you will have a good solid venture which may last for many years. Until the next wave arrives, that is.

Above all, it is our duty as engineers and technicians to constantly innovate and improve. Otherwise we wouldn’t be true to our mission. So pick engineering winners, but keep well behind the leading edge so that you can optimise them with the best results for you and others.

Thanks to Donald Christiansen of the IEEE for his interesting article.

Remember as the Forbes journal once gloomily remarked: “When you get the urge to predict the future, better lie down until it goes away.”

Yours in engineering

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 02 September 2009

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 27 August 2009

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 19 August 2009

Dear colleagues

There are many examples of products and companies developed during poor economic times - venerable companies such as HP, FedEx, CNN and products such as the iPod. Adversity spurred the creators on. However it is very rare to have a Eureka moment in design (the one when Archimedes purportedly ran down the street naked hollering, "I have found it!” – Similar to Steve Job’s comment at the end of this note). But innovation is a key element in driving any business or economy upwards and outwards, particularly in hard times. As Eric Starkloff remarked sagely, “Lean innovation occurs when times are tight and your resources are very thin and you need three items: Doing more with less; proving it fast and using your business, technical and social networks to the extreme.”
 
 1. Do more with less. This requires using fewer engineering staff to achieve the same results. Perhaps by reducing your previous team of hardware designers, mechanical engineers and RF engineers to two electronic engineers and you. This does create significant hardship – the remaining few have to multitask and be multi-skilled or acquire new complex skills quickly. It may also require you to cobble bits of an existing design together, for example - not entirely optimum, but if it enables you to get a working system out there quickly then it’s brilliant.
 
2. Quick prototyping to prove the concept works. Once you can demonstrate a working prototype, your firm will be encouraged to support further work. This will require innovation – not only in your thinking, but also in your approach and in the tools you use. These may not reflect your ideal and may indeed compromise your standards; but if it enables you to get a demonstration product out quickly…...
 
3. Finally (and most importantly), I reckon it is something we as engineers and technicians don’t do enough of: Leverage and “work” our business, technical and social networks more. We like focusing on the technical side in the design and work. However, it is often the network that really builds value in very quickly. The ideal example is the iPod. It is a highly fashionable and clever engineering design, undoubtedly, but was created because of a network of linked-in hardware/software and content (the non-engineering bit) which was brought together brilliantly in such a way that the competitors were left gasping. Networks will also help you source the bits necessary to do item 1 above (“Do more with less”). This approach is cheaper and quicker than designing and building what is required yourself.

Other examples of engineering products built from networks must surely be the array of Microsoft products out there. Microsoft, with their software, have a great network with Intel’s hardware and firmware chips and an array (perhaps, reluctant?) of hardware and software partners producing interlocking products. They are all linked, but are being propelled along by the market, where the complete package is essential to the products’ success.
 
Another example of using networks and interlocking products must be the usual OEM story where a Gas Turbine manufacturer takes many of the components (PLC Control System/Vibration monitoring/SCADA system/mechanical components/electrical switchgear from a variety of partners) and provides a finished (but complex) product.
 
So my suggestions are;
 
* Actively build your business, technical and social networks. This seems a non-engineering thing to do particularly for shy engineers, but is essential to your career and your firm and indeed to your product.
* When you are designing anything and are looking to build enormous value think outside the box and use your network
* Think of building value as you would with Lego blocks. The more interlocking bits you can find which match an overall real need; the further you will be ahead of your competitors and the more resilient your product will be to change.
* Persist with your approach and networks.
 
I think this comment from Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, is so true particularly the last bit which has been italicised:
 
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.

Thanks to Eric Starkloff of NI and Electronics News for your intriguing article from which I have gleaned my ideas.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 12 August 2009

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 06 August 2009

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 29 July 2009

Dear Colleagues

Through my observation of engineers and technicians over the past 30 years I have discovered that certain traits or habits make them successful - very successful, in some cases. I believe that we can all become extraordinarily able through the adoption of these practices. Thanks to Buckbee and Covey for the inspiration to write this.

1. Know your Process, Operator and Client/Customer

Firstly, before you can commence engineering a project you need to have an in-depth understanding of all aspects and angles of the project that you are working with. If it is designing a better control and instrumentation system you need to understand the process intimately. If it is for the electric distribution system for an arc furnace; you had better understand the characteristics of the metal you are arcing and the resultant harmonics.

Secondly, naturally you have a client with a set of requirements to be considered and facilitated. For example, she may want you to build a wind turbine for renewable energy, but is also concerned about the plight of a particular breed of bird in the locality, on the verge of extinction, which may be hurt in the turbine blades.

Finally, if you're designing a wonderful engineering system you will probably require an operator to use it. You need to understand what his needs are. The operator generally knows far more about how the process behaves (esp. at 2am) normally, abnormally and during failures. Sometimes the operator and the client are the same – for example, Steve Jobs when designing the iPod had to consider an unpredictable teenager (client and operator) making peculiar demands on the hardware

This all takes an enormous amount of effort and time. But there are no short cuts here. Failure to adequately understand the process, operator and customer is effectively the same as building a house of straw (rather than with mortar and bricks); We all know what happened to the little pigs when the big bad wolf came calling.

2. Be Proactive with your Engineering

Unless you drive the engineering project and your team the project will never reach completion. It is essential to be constantly on the lookout for problems and their solutions. It always amazes me that even the tiniest issues can hold up an entire multi million dollar project - a screw or chip missing, or an unsecured wire.

Always apply the maxim - “when there is any doubt; there is no doubt” - when engineering something. If you suspect the HVAC design hasn’t taken into account the amount of dust in the air or the PLCs have a memory sizing problem, then check check check. You will no doubt find that your worst suspicions are correct. An apt quote from Andy Grove of Intel (the almost chemical engineering founder): “Only the paranoid survive in engineering”. (He actually referred to business in the original quote).

Being proactive means that you need to be committed and have a passion for what you are doing in engineering. (Our lives are too short to waste doing things we don’t want to do). So show your passion and take everyone along with you. Be precise and meticulous at all times and demand this from everyone on your team. A slight miscalculation or delay in ordering a critical item can be a disaster for a project.

3. Prioritize at all Times

As Covey says: “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing”. You will be inundated on a daily basis with fighting fires, including equipment failures, meetings and people demanding your time. Constantly clarify what the most important issues are and focus on them (filter out all other distractions). For example, Buckbee suggests that in a process manufacturing environment, the main things are probably:

• Unit Cost
• Production rate
• Quality
• Energy costs
• Reliability
• Environmental and safety

Note how (and engineers hate this) the emphasis is on $$$; not direct technical things to prioritize. 

4. Document the beginning

Define the beginning of the project in business terms (i.e. $). You can certainly link in technical metrics, but the overriding aim has to be on improving a particular business metric with the proposed project. Ensure that everyone is in agreement with what you currently have in front of you and what you will be doing to improve this.  

5. Communicate well and extensively

This is an area most engineers don’t like to get too involved with. Reading, writing and speaking in simple understandable language is not a preferred activity for most engineering professionals. But you have to communicate your requirements and successes in simple business terms. Long reports detailing exquisite technical accomplishments are never read. A short email with a provocative subject line: “$340,000 savings with flowmeter installation” followed by before and after pictures and some examples of how you have improved the quality (lower variability) of the process is far more powerful than a detailed 200 page account which includes the problems with the flow loop and the challenges in installation.

6.Use your Tools Effectively

As engineering professionals we all like to dig deeply and to investigate the technical issues; and we sometimes get sidetracked from the main game with these activities. Instead we need to use effective tools to get our results as quickly as possible without being sidetracked into minor issues.

And always ensure your tools are doing the right job. Compare their results with what you would intuitively expect – based on your past experience. Never trust a software program until it has proven itself in all circumstances.

7. Keep Sharpening your Skills and Know-how

Technology changes on a daily basis. You need to keep sharpening your skills by reading widely; exchanging views with your technical peers; attending outstanding training courses (which will be clearly beneficial) and drawing on your mentors to assist you with challenges. Keep a natural curiosity in everything you do. Keep questioning the ways you and your colleagues do things and examine ways to improve on these. Never accept a particular method of doing something without testing its assumptions. And never trust anecdotal information that something is superior. Always examine information gleaned from the web and magazines with a critical eye - look for the flaws - question everything. And remember that on-the-job training is probably the most powerful training you will ever receive.

Form these 7 habits and you will become a significant source of expertise. Encourage your peers to do the same. Sharing your know-how with others is one of the great traditions of the engineering profession.

Thanks to George Buckbee of Expertune and Stephen Covey for the inspiration and reference material to write this article.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 23 July 2009

Dear Colleagues,

Steve is away from the office this week, so in his absence we have included a segment from one of our recent press releases for you. Obviously, these can be construed to be promoting our training (which they are) but we have had many case studies appearing over the past 12 months with this new form of learning from all walks of life (even one gentleman in Canada who is over 70 yo who is still working and updating his skills):

Online training via the internet really is coming of age when two generations of engineering professionals from one a South African company both enrol in the same e-learning course.

A father and son in a family owned business based in Johannesburg both enrolled earlier this year in IDC Technologies’ 18 month Advanced Diploma of Electrical Engineering.  And both remain excited about the course several months down the road.

We asked son Chris Liebenberg for some comments about the course, his progress, and what it was like sharing the study with his father.

“Let me say I’m a big advocate for this e-learning approach,” states Chris.  “If it had been this good when I was younger I probably would have studied at least as much as I should have done back then!  It is more flexible than classroom based learning.  For example, we can always review the recordings of the live sessions if we miss one.  But the live sessions presented each week have been fantastic and with an excellent instructor such as we have it is hugely motivational to ‘attend’.  I’ve been completely thrilled.”

Both father and son seem to be benefitting by doing the course together.  They have developed some “healthy competition” over their assignment work but also compare notes and discuss some of the exercises and problems presented by the instructors.  “My father occasionally needs some help with his computer connection, and in return it is good to have someone close by to discuss the material with,” reports Chris

Does Chris have any advice for someone contemplating enrolling in this course?  He says “Yes, go for it.”

Have you had a positive or negative experience with e-Learning which you would like to share?  Let us know!

F'REE Engineering & Technical Whitepapers

Every week, we are putting up at least 10 to 20 new engineering white papers in areas such as data communications & networking, electrical, instrumentation, industrial IT, mechanical and project management. Please send us any useful white papers you may have uncovered in these areas and we will place these up as well. You can locate these white papers at: https://www.idc-online.com/resources/technical-references.html

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 16 July 2009

Dear Colleagues

We have this week placed up a selection of papers from a few of our conferences (see http://www.idc-online.com  ). We all know the expression:" There is no such thing as a free lunch". But we have gone to considerable effort to collect these materials; so most assuredly they are good quality.

Engineering for quality, not longevity, is being brought home to us every day with loved ones who are often being sustained by machines. Now, I have no intention of engaging in debating the minefield of ethics in this area; well outside my competence and powers of persistence. As our technology improves in this area and we have a massive number of people who are aging, we are going to be increasingly confronted with this issue.

Our thrust as engineering professionals has always been on providing machines which will last forever (well, that is what we are often told in the marketing materials). I reckon a lot us intrinsically believe the human is yet another machine. There would be definitely mixed feelings if you designed an instrument which stopped working based on when the quality of output dropped off. We tend to be forced by the financial types and managers in our business to keep flogging that instrument to perform; despite poor quality data or performance; until it really does die. They then reluctantly allow us to upgrade to a new instrument.

When I did a medical electronics course, oh so many years ago, Prof. Chris Barnard, the eminent heart surgeon, remarked wryly when he dubiously looked at our early, primitive heart pacemakers: "The purpose of medicine is to improve the quality of human life; not to prolong it". There is no doubt that a heart pacemaker today can provide an incredibly high quality of life (as compared to those early ones in the sixties and seventies which were perhaps, brutal on the human body). We have an enormous growth in medical engineering technology (This seems to be reasonably recession proof ?) and growing associated costs and an aging western population increasingly needing access to this technology.

Despite the current economic travails, we find ourselves in, there are enormous engineering opportunities opening up with the aging of the population in terms of provision of improved quality in working comfort and health. We are all aware of the obvious ones such as vision degradation as you get older, to lower levels of endurance and powers of concentration.  From providing engineering assistance at work, to the home and to leisure. I can think of a myriad of issues. For example, where a 65yo technician (as against a 21yo) may be highly skilled but is unable to physically get to examine an defective instrument but needs a remote method of accessing it; to inability to work in harsh freezing conditions for the same periods of time; to limited physical strength in lifting something up quickly and in controlling an instrument with the dexterity of a 22yo. Our safety guru, Dave MacDonald, will probably agree that there are many safety issues that need to be addressed with an older working population; which may not be such an issue when you were younger.

So what am I saying here in terms of action steps ?

•  Think of an engineering professional who may be 65yo (not 21yo) working on your plant when it comes to providing easy access to instruments and equipment
• Seize the massively growing opportunities in medical technology and for older workers by taking your designs into this field
• When working with people in healthcare perhaps consider the focus on quality of life when engineering solutions

Yours in engineering learning,

Steve

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 10 July 2009

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 02 July 2009

Dear Colleagues

A short <5 minute video on Electrical Power Quality, presented by the inimitable Terry Cousins (of TLC software), is up for your perusal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZqkD4syAO8. There will be more going up over the next few weeks (emphatically non-sales).

In response to my blog last week I am grateful to Dave Macdonald, our safety control systems expert (and author of three highly praised books on the topic), who has kindly put together the item below on systematic errors. It is worth reading if you are involved in designing control systems - for instrumentation, mechanical or electrical systems.

Some thoughts (by Dave) on Systematic Errors in Control Systems

If you build any sort of process or machine control system there is a very good chance that, when you first put it into service or test it, you will be plagued by some kind of ‘bug’, either in the wiring or in the software. The proper term for such bugs is: ‘Systematic Error in Design’.

Most of us are familiar with the routine of version upgrades or specification revisions. These are not big problems for a control system on a production process: The control engineer says, “Sorry, just hold on a few minutes, I will make a few quick changes to remedy the problem - I didn’t quite understand what you wanted first time round”.

But it’s a different story if the bug is dormant in a functional safety system, better known as a safety instrumented system (SIS) or emergency shutdown system. We can’t afford to have a wrong response just when the plant is about to explode! So it’s not surprising that SIS projects involve some heavy duty quality assurance work to try to minimize the chances of systematic errors creeping into the design. 

Some examples may help us to see the problem:

1 Faulty trip logic: An error in the trip logic diagram may not be revealed by testing the SIS as the faulty response will be built into the safety system. Testing the diagram with the (independent) process engineer might be a good idea here.
2 Failure to separate the safety sensor from the regular control sensor. Whatever goes wrong with the control loop will also afflict the safety function. We call this a common cause failure, but it originates from a systematic design error.
3 Incorrect installation of the trip sensor. The trip sensor will not correctly read the process condition.
4 Failure to consider all possibilities when scoping a safety function. See below for a notorious example from the London Underground.

Systematic Errors. When the mistake is built into the design through errors in understanding.

Train Safety…..?!!!

A London Underground train rolled backwards half a mile when the driver fell asleep, highlighting a serious flaw in signaling systems: they only work with trains going forward.
The Engineer: 14 July 2000

 

5 Safety controls often employ redundancy to ensure fault tolerance for random failures in the instruments. However, the benefits of doing this are significantly limited if the redundant instruments are identical - they may both suffer the same failure, for the same reason.

Here is a systematic failure example from my own experience: Two identical diaphragm seals, for pressure transmitters on a distillation column, failed at the same time when a severe vacuum occurred during a shutdown. The diaphragms were stretched leaving a 30% zero offset on both transmitters - not much help if one is for control and the other is for safety!

How can you avoid systematic errors?
• Be on the alert for common cause failure possibilities between control and safety instruments. Always look for diversity between instruments on the same application.
• Use the best quality assurance methods in hardware specification and in application software projects. Check back at each step forward in the project.
• Apply the safety life cycle guidelines of IEC 61511 and then find someone who is genuinely independent of your project to review the project stages for pitfalls.
• Strictly manage all design modifications and evaluate them for impact on the original safety requirements.

The more familiar you are with design projects, the more aware you will be of the potential for built in errors. Be alert!

Although the famous Economist, John Kenneth Galbraith, probably wasn’t thinking of systematic errors specifically, nonetheless this does apply: “If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error”.

Thanks so much Dave Macdonald for your elegant dissertation above.

yours in engineering learning

Steve

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 24 June 2009

Dear Colleagues

Don’t forget - we have a complimentary presentation on Transformer Failure in two weeks time. Details at the end of this newsletter.

As engineering professionals, we are surely closer to the driverless car than the paperless toilet

There is an old jibe amongst pilots regarding the basic requirements for flying a modern plane: The answer is a computer, a pilot and a dog. The computer flies the plane; the pilot’s sole task is to feed the dog and the dog’s job is to bite the pilot if he tries to touch anything. This is a fairly cynical attitude, yet most long haul flights are handled by auto pilot. I am a little twitchy about these modern planes, though, especially after the A330 which broke up over the Atlantic a few weeks ago; seemingly the computers (and presumably the pilots) were bamboozled by erroneous speed readings due to iced up pitot tubes. Most instrument engineers will sigh when they read this; as they would have been exposed to similar situations in plants of every description. But naturally, we must wait for the full airline disaster story before settling on this explanation.

Interestingly enough autopilots have been around since 1912. The modern autopilots still use the old Intel 80386 processor from 25 years ago (remember DOS and no odd operating system crashes). Trains are also highly automated (they only move backwards and forwards at the right speed and watch for red lights) without drivers - and people are comfortable with this. You only need to look at the London Dockyard trains, various world city monorails and the Malaysian Airport to see this in evidence.

What is mystifying, however, is the series of accidents with driver- led trains; this week, in the US, one drove into the back of another, and collisions at point crossings are not very rare.

But the big prize - to automate the car - has two obstacles; technical – obviously - and a harder one – psychological. Roads are enormously complex places compared with railway systems and the relatively empty skies in which planes fly (and then when landing they have massively human controlled airports and pilots on hand). Already the car is a massively digital and computerised animal with over 200 on-board sensors. The high end one possesses over 70 microprocessors and even the lowly Tata Nano has a dozen. Satnav is a key part of many drivers’ daily lives - allowing them to get around cheaply with satellite navigation in strange locations. Internet connectivity is achieved with smart phones allowing all sorts of interesting information to be gathered (such as real time traffic information and indeed even the location of speed traps). As we all know from personal experience; a driverless car has to deal with a myriad of issues – unexpected objects in the road, giving way to emergency vehicles; other accidents; drunken pedestrians; sudden road diversions.

But the payback could be enormous – a machine can react far more quickly than a human to a hazardous situation. And if the cars on the road could “chat” to each other via wireless they could minimise traffic jams and dangerous overtaking. As far back as 1994, a driverless car drove through the manic traffic-infested streets of Paris at speeds up to 120km/h for over 1000 kms. So the technology is almost here. Several cars (Mercedes and Volvo) will now brake automatically if they detect an imminent collision. And the Lexus (from Toyota) does its own parallel parking.

What to do:

• Read up on this new technology and talk about it with your peers

• Look for the business opportunities unfolding here – whether you are mechanical, electrical, IT or electronically oriented - with millions of cars on the road the re-engineering required is wide ranging and the huge opportunities evident

• Apply these new proven automobile technologies to your next project

• Ensure that whatever is done; all cars and support gear are super safe

• Think of the Law of Unintended Consequences and figure out unexpected results which may need to be dealt with – either from an opportunity or safety point of view

We engineers can improve on this safety zenith I am sure - a humorous remark by Dudley Moore: The best car safety device is a rear-view mirror with a cop in it.

Thanks to the Economist for references in writing this.

Case Studies of Transformer Failures

Listen in, ask questions or join in on our discussion during this free interactive webinar on Wednesday July 1st. It is to be presented by Dr Jerry Walker. During the 45 minute webinar we will review case studies of transformer failure, including; off circuit tap changer failure, sulphur contamination, and extreme conditions. We will summarise common reasons for failure by occurrence and severity, then look at preventive measures.

Yours in

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 17 June 2009

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 10 June 2009

Dear Colleagues

Contrary to my effusive praise for the USB (esp. compared to RS-232); I received a list of woes relating to its use from you dear readers. I have placed some of your comments up on the blog site. Thanks very much for your quick and often detailed responses.

As engineering professionals, do we save enough energy?

I have watched with interest the collapse of oil prices - and then, in the past month or so, their upward trajectory. The upward trend, in many cases, is as a result of our friendly speculators betting on the worldwide economy getting better more quickly. I have always believed that engineers and technicians are very conservative in their energy usage – always looking for ways of doing more with less. But even with a recession, we are still a long way from a time when oil was $7/barrel – back in 1971. Since then, there has been an impressive decoupling (yes – that economic term) of growth in energy consumption and “human activity” (or Gross domestic product). As most of you already know, some of the most publicized methods for energy conservation are to incorporate passive energy designs into a home (or office) using:

* Solar water heaters. This is where hot water is moved to where it is needed without the use of mechanical pumps
* Convective loop/double shell design. This involves the inclusion of a space between the inner and outer walls of a home allowing for convective circulation of (hot) air
* Efficient building components. These include efficient roof and wall insulation; multi pane windows and tight air sealing for both windows and doors
* Natural day lighting. This involves the avoidance of east and west facing windows so that the need for artificial lighting is reduced.
* Window glazing. When it is done well Goldilocks would remark, “Just right”. This is critical, as too much can prevent adequate daylight penetration while too little can result in the need for increased heating.

Active systems are also becoming increasingly attractive through either an open loop or closed loop system where pumps, powered by solar photovoltaics, are used to drive the water around the system.

Whatever conspiracy theorists say; you can bet your bottom dollar that the oil price will shoot up to high levels again - apart from anything else because there is a growing shortage of oil. So purely from a cost and strategic point of view, energy conservation is worth investigating and employing…….and you would be reducing pollution and CO2 gases in an effective manner.

What are the results to date?

Energy use per dollar of GDP has fallen more than 40% since the 1970’s. Oddly enough, energy per capita has remained relatively constant; but will be impacted by the employment of the measures outlined above. Other metrics (compared to the ‘70’s) include; new home fridges using a third less energy; fluorescent lighting using less than half the energy and the amount of energy needed to generate 1kWh of electricity dropping by 10%.

So where do we go from here (bearing in mind that high energy prices will return with a vengeance):

* Actively look for energy conservation options in your personal life and business
* Look to apply clever technologies to energy conservation
* Read up as much as possible and preach these technologies to your peers

Thanks to P.E. Meyer and G.F.McClure of the IEEE for their very commendable (although US-centric) article.

As William A. Smith remarked rather seriously in 1908:
As Engineering is the science of economy, of conserving the energy, kinetic and potential, provided and stored up by nature for the use of man. It is the business of engineering to utilize this energy to the best advantage, so that there may be the least possible waste.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 03 June 2009

Dear Colleagues

Recently, when looking at our local electronics’ supermarket, the pile of 32 Gigabytes USB memory sticks, now costing less than $100, caught my attention. It made me ponder, yet again, the ubiquitous USB standard and its industrial usage. There is no doubt that Ethernet is a strong industrial standard used widely around the traps - but USB offers a real alternative. Spend a few minutes considering it as you read the following.

Over 2.5billion USB (Universal Serial Bus) devices were shipped last year and there are more than 6 million installed (according to the USB Implementers Forum). The brilliance of USB (well, USB 2.0) is that it is almost ‘plug and play’ (not ‘plug and pray’, as many jokers referred to the earlier incarnations of industrial networks and PCs). One can see the different USB speed benefits for a 25 GByte high definition movie. It ranges from; USB 1.0 (9.3 hours), to USB 2.0 (1.39 minutes), to USB 3.0 (70 seconds).

USB provides a medium bandwidth, non-proprietary port with multi-drop, half duplex twisted pair operation (similar to RS-485). Because of its differential nature, noise immunity for industrial environments is a positive consequence. Data rates are high and it can connect up to 127 devices. Although it is half the speed (480 Mbit/s) of Gigabit Ethernet (which incidentally, is not used overwhelmingly in industrial applications) it is the USB’s versatility and convenience, rather than its speed, which is magnificent for industrial applications. A data logger can be installed in a few seconds, up to 5m from the PC. It can be simply plugged into the PC to draw the necessary power from the USB connection. It is also easy to add and (hot) swap new modules. Many instrumentation companies are using USB for a range of applications including; data acquisition, digital multimeters (DMMs) and switching modules and sensors - such as proximity detectors. USB is also particularly useful as a power supply (where the DMM uses only 2W, for example).

The great benefit of a USB port is that a hub can be easily added and then onto this several devices attached with minimal software impact (some designers up to 12 devices). With a hub it is possible to cascade up to 5 levels. And another trusty old use is replacing old DOS based floppies with USB data storage, thus providing a new lease of life to old hardware. Although the main standard at present is USB 2.0; USB 1.1 is still around and being used for mice and keyboards. Many industrial users are relieved to find the arrival of a plethora of ‘ruggedized’ USB chip sets. These have wider temperature ranges and there is greater driver support for USB across most operating systems ranging from x86 chips to Linux.

On the negative side, however - the USB lacks a widely used industrial connector (Industrial Ethernet uses industrialised connectors now to replace the horrible RJ-45 connector). Furthermore, the challenges for USB, in an industrial context, include; connector strain relief and the maximum cable length of 5m (although with USB hubs (to 30 m) and extenders (to 500m) the distance is greatly increased). And finally, there is no provision for electrical isolation - a problem for industrial applications, surely.

Despite these detractors, in your next project don’t automatically assume that Ethernet is the name of the game - seriously consider USB.

And to those of you who poo-poo the idea of using USB for industrial purposes, may I be so bold as to quote Samuel Johnson:

“Nothing will ever be attempted if all objections must first be overcome.”

Thanks to Electronics Design, Wikipedia and B&B Electronics for references.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 28 May 2009

My dream (well, one of ’em), when I was in my early twenties as a young engineer, was to travel and work extensively throughout the world. However, having done this (and being on an engineering business trip at present), I am a little more circumspect about travel and prefer the home turf. There is this belief, regarding work overseas, that it is not only exotic, but lucrative. Most often, though, this is not the case and one merely lands up elsewhere because the boss said so!

We all know about the cultural ambassadors such as Paul Gaugin, Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway who have enriched our worlds enormously – when they worked at home and abroad. But engineers working creatively and contributing creatively to the world by working overseas? This is doubtful, surely? Research, however, by two psychologists; Drs Maddux and Galinsky, clearly shows enormously enhanced creativity as a result of working in different countries. Although the cause is somewhat unclear.

There is no doubt that engineering professionals travel extensively these days. As far as engineering is concerned we really live in a global village. Engineers travel for a whole gamut of reasons, ranging from the minor (like plugging an updated EPROM Chip into the PLC system in a remote power station location - a few hour assignment, but deemed worthwhile if risk is avoided) to the profound and extensive (like sending a team of engineers and technicians to construct a new petrochemical plant in the middle of North Africa – a project taking a good two years).

Some thoughts on what to consider when working overseas:

• As a young engineering professional travel extensively and embrace the world – it will enhance your career and creativity magnificently
• Make a grand effort to get on with your boss and management team in the foreign town
• Thrive and learn from the culture and way of working and thinking, as an engineer and technician, overseas – it will contribute to your ability to think laterally.
• Assess national standards and see how you can enhance them when compared with those in your home country.
• Add engineering value by sharing your know-how widely with the locals
• Look for opportunities to take concepts, products and services from your homeland to your new overseas workplace and vice versa
• Be careful to measure the personal price paid when working overseas
• Examine the impact on a young family (sending kids to a boarding school and having your wife/husband, with a PhD in nuclear physics, sitting around cooling her/his heels, is not always a happy option)
• Ensure you get paid in a currency that doesn’t depreciate after 6 months in your new location
• Keep professionally up to date with your peers back at home and don’t let your skills degrade
• Build professional relationships with people in overseas’ countries – these relationships often continue long after you have returned home and can be enormously valuable and satisfying

An interesting observation follows. It is made by Faith Popcorn about the Americans - but is certainly not exclusive to them. We can all ultimately fall into this humdrum routine.

“The trouble in corporate America is that too many people with too much power live in a box (their home), then travel the same road every day to another box (their office)”.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 13 May 2009

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 06 May 2009

Dear Colleagues

My mailbox buckled under the strain of responses from my discussion on lighting last week. Thank you all for your comments. I have put a selection up onto my blog site.

Don’t forget another in our series of complimentary 45 min. webinars (no sales spiel) entitled: “Major disasters in engineering and technical marketing (and how to avoid them)” on Wed 14th May (details at the bottom of this note).

1.0 Engineers and Techs – Rip up your power cables
You probably sigh, as I often do, when trying to move some piece of equipment which is festooned with cables. And some of us (including my dear wife, I might add), have cursed at 3am with the incessant beeping of the cell phone wanting to be charged. Fortunately the data communications and networking cables are no longer as evident with the advent of wireless, but the power cables and charger are still firmly in place - apart from one’s electric toothbrush which is cleverly charged by inductive coupling. There has been an explosion of cell phones, mp3 players, computers and even household robots (for some of the more daring amongst us), all demanding that we break that last umbilical power cable to make our lives that much more convenient.

The surprising thing in engineering is that, despite the incredible advances in communications and technology, electrical power still cannot be simply beamed through the air - at which point irritating adapters, cables and plugs could be dispensed with.

Transmitting power wirelessly has been used through the centuries - mainly electromagnetic radiation using radio waves. Unfortunately, even when radio waves are tightly focused, they still tend to disperse in all directions and undoubtedly have an adverse impact on humans. Directed electromagnetic radiation, such as with lasers, requires an uninterrupted line of sight and can cause harm to anything erroneously entering its path. As a result this is not viable either.

Initial commercial success, to date, has been in the use of electromagnetic induction; where a coil (contained in a pad) generates a magnetic field when a current flows through it. A mobile device containing a corresponding coil is brought close to the pad and the magnetic field generates a current in the second coil - charging the mobile device’s battery. This was the concept behind Splashpower - a British technology firm who attracted very strong interest from consumer electronic firms in 2004. They unfortunately went bust recently - illustrating that turning the theory into profitable products is somewhat elusive. In Dec. 2008, the Wireless Power Consortium (modeled on Blue Tooth), was formed to promote a common standard for inductive wireless charging; with some big hitter members such as Philips, Sanyo and TI. Although this technology is being commercialized with toothbrushes; commonality is required across different brands of mobile phones (unbelievably when you lose your charger, sometimes it is cheaper to buy a new phone) and digital cameras.

Strong competition between manufacturers of mobile devices is fuelling the introduction of wireless charging. With its latest phone, Palm introduced an optional charging pad - using induction to charge the device when it is placed on the pad. Another offering involves embedding charging pads into kitchen counters to charge wireless blenders and electric knives, for example. Another less whiz bang approach includes creating a charging pad with four small conductive metal studs on the back of the phone - allowing electrical contact at all times with a charging pad.

Other options, with faint hopes of success, include long range transmission of wireless power (similar to the passive power principle in crystal radios); which is reasonably successful over short distances. The intensity of radio waves needed to charge mobile phones, however, is likely to be hazardous to human health. Over distances of 7.5m, Powercast, has created products that can power wireless sensor networks at safe power levels (mW over meters). And there are inevitable “triers” with laser powered devices, although it is difficult to see these as safe options with humans floating around.

I must mention one innovative design from MIT - as I wonder why we didn’t think of this many years ago - called WiTricity (Wireless Electricity) based on using coupled resonant objects. As you may recall from your high school physics (or indeed radio theory – think of a tuned oscillator), two resonant objects exchange energy very efficiently. A great (mechanical) example is a child on a swing - a resonator. Only when she pumps her legs at the right frequency is she able to impart substantial energy. Or the well known example of an opera singer, singing at precisely the right note and shattering only one of 100 wine glasses in a room which has been tuned exactly to the same frequency and has accumulated sufficient energy. The WiTricity project equipment comprises two copper coils – each is a self resonant system. The sending coil "sends out" a magnetic field. This allows for strong interaction between the sending and receiving coils, whilst the interaction with the rest of the environment is weak. Do not mistake this with magnetic induction which is apparently almost a million times less efficient than this coupled resonant approach. They have demonstrated lighting a 60W bulb, from a power source 2meters away, with objects in between. It is exciting to see this coming to commercial fruition.

Some pundits reckon that mobile phone manufacturers use the proprietary power adaptors to lock customers into their products, as it is a hassle to change. But change is slowly coming and one can expect to see inductive power, at the least, but hopefully some more innovative technologies, such as that from MIT, coming to the fore.

Over the ages, the best example of wireless power has to be as William McDonough remarked at the Fortune Brainstorm Conference in 2006:
“Don't get me wrong: I love nuclear energy! It's just that I prefer fusion to fission. And it just so happens that there's an enormous fusion reactor safely banked a few million miles from us. It delivers more than we could ever use in just about 8 minutes. And it is wireless!”

Thanks to the Economist, MIT and ScienceDaily for the background information here.

2. Major Disasters in Engineering and Technical Marketing (and How to Avoid them) webinar on 14th May

This complimentary 45 minute webinar aims to illustrate the perils of marketing so that engineers and technicians can develop greater awareness of the potential for real product disasters. It is to be presented by Terry Cousins, a professional engineer who has set up a remarkable worldwide business designing and manufacturing electronic test equipment.  We look at 5 different, but famous, marketing campaigns from recent history and consider the lessons that can be learnt from them. One of the crucial questions to be considered:- ‘Is innovation enough to guarantee market success?’ This live webinar will provide us with lots to think about in an entertaining format…….. and enable you to boost the sales of your products and services! The registration page is at http://www.idc-online.com/IDCwebinar.html

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 29 April 2009

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 22 April 2009

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 12 April 2009

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 08 April 2009

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 01 April 2009

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 23 March 2009

Dear Colleagues

Engineering whitepapers

We are building up a great source of complimentary engineering information. Thousands of useful articles are available on topics ranging from data communications, instrumentation to electrical and mechanical engineering. These are located by clicking on downloads at www.idc-online.com.

Go for outstanding engineering designs by suppressing your subconscious

I have been reading through selected bits of what must be an outstanding book on engineering design (Pahl, Beitz and Wallace). It is written, not from an electrical, electronics or mechanical engineering perspective, but from a designer’s, - and this is quite different.

According to these guys, design commences with abstracting an idea in an effort to identify the essential problems. This is where we, as engineering professionals, should really come into our own. Often so-called solutions are already available, but are based on fixed ideas and constraints which often don’t even exist. As the book suggests; it is absolutely critical that we avoid focusing on conventional or perceived solutions which are lodged in our subconscious. An extremely difficult task, as this involves stepping right outside of our comfy zones and thinking laterally. It involves ‘ignoring the particular or incidental and emphasizing the general and essential’. In other words we have to identify what the “crux” of the problem is. For example, in designing a labyrinth seal, the “crux” of the task is designing a shaft seal without physical constraints. Further questions regarding the “crux” should be asked. For example should “it”:

• Improve the technical functions e.g. the sealing quality or safety

• Reduce weight or space

• Significantly reduce costs

• Significantly shorten delivery times

• Improve production methods

Each of these goals may result in different design outcomes. Only once the “crux” of the task has been correctly identified, can we move onto formulating the overall task.

I would love feedback from you on design problems you have encountered and the novel solutions you employed to solve them.

I was intrigued by Freeman Dyson’s take on design: “A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design work with as few original ideas as possible.”

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 19 March 2009

Dear Colleagues

Two things on this fine day:

1. Major Disasters in Power Quality (and how to prevent them)

Why not join us for another in our series of live, online webinars on 2nd April 2009? These are complimentary and are available to you to thank you for all your support over the past 20 yrs.

2. Fill your Engineering Gaps

As an engineering professional, have you ever worked outside your comfort zone? It is a challenging experience, but ultimately rewarding - learning to master a new skill set which fills in a few gaps in one’s engineering knowledge. Many engineers and technicians would suggest that it is crazy to expose oneself like this. Ultimately, however, I believe the benefits outweigh the ‘dangers’. I presented a course recently covering a few topics outside of my areas of experience - I was somewhat daunted, but with some intensive work and considerable coaching from my peers beforehand, I managed to do a reasonable job (according
to the reviews anyway). My anxiety peaked when I was exposed to delegates with real experience rather than simply book knowledge. As a result of the preparation and then interaction with the class I have improved my knowledge in a fairly new area (but I was naturally very nervous). One of the things we do regularly at work is focus on the areas we are comfortable in (especially on a Monday morning after a serendipitous weekend) - why take a cold show when you can mooch through the day, working with stuff you are comfortable with?

We don’t need to go on training courses to skill ourselves in new areas - this is perhaps an obvious starting point - but the best way is to talk to our peers (they will be delighted to share their knowledge). But then we must actually work in these unknown areas to gain real experience. Take industrial automation for example. If you are working on calibrating and installing instruments all day, learn to set up a Profibus or Foundation fieldbus network, or examine the PLC or DCS coding for that tricky analog problem. Size the variable speed drives your peers are planning to install on the plant or have a look at the process design and get involved with the flow of the materials. If you are an electrical engineer working on power distribution layouts, move across to calibrate instrumentation and perhaps look at the IT issues with the SCADA installation of your plant. Being a widely multiskilled engineer is hugely advantageous today (let alone enjoyable). We may find our skills are in demand now; but tomorrow may be a completely different story. Investment in some short term reskilling may bring enormous benefits in the future.

One of the surprising issues in surveys on this topic indicates that specialists are even more highly prized than before - this would appear to make what I have said above a nonsense. What is omitted, however, is that requirements for specialities disappear after a few years and then reskilling becomes imperative. So the safest course is to constantly reskill in new and allied areas. The advantage of a wider skill set is the ability to view and approach a project more holistically, thus avoiding the embarrassment when unforeseen and inevitable problems arise. An example of this was when new locomotives were commissioned recently (in a notable city in the western world) and were found lacking as the power distribution network failed to cope with the power demands of these newly purchased railway engines.

Now, if you are really energetic, walk into your accountant’s office and offer to do the management and cost accounting for your area…..you will be horrified to find out how easy it is.

A comment by Wilbur Wright about the importance of engineering know-how is intriguing (and surely prescient of the admirable Capt. Sully who safely landed the Boeing, with failed engines, in the Hudson River - some 100 years later):

“It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill.”

3. Major disasters in Power Quality and how to prevent them

Our next webinar is on Thursday 2nd April: Major Disasters in Power Quality (and How to Prevent Them).  Join us for this session – one, in our series of live, online webinars?  

They are complimentary, short and informative (no sales spiel – promise)

This Power Quality webinar will be presented by popular IDC senior instructor, Terry Cousins.
You can choose one out of the three session times on Thursday April 2nd .  All you need is a computer with reliable internet access (preferably broadband speed).

This 45 minute webinar will commence by contrasting the “ideal” with “practical” power systems, then move on to consider typical problems, their consequences and preventative measures and costs.

You can join us from anywhere in the world.  And you can choose to either observe and listen passively or roll up your “webinar sleeves” and participate in the discussion!  We will send you joining instructions once you’ve registered.

You can choose your session times and register at http://www.idc-online.com/IDCwebinar.html.

Registrations close 24 hours before the first session.

Yours in engineering learning

Steve

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 11 March 2009

Dear Colleagues

Two things today.

1. WA Industrial Roadshow next week in Perth/Bunbury/Karratha and Kalgoorlie

We are running complimentary seminars on Industrial Ethernet/Electrical wiring regs/hazardous areas. More info : http://www.processonline.com.au/events

2. Engineering the intelligent building

It’s 7.00am. You wake up to the gentle sounds of your favourite CD playing. The lights in your bedroom "fade up" and then follow you around your home as you walk into the kitchen to drink your coffee - which has been automatically made for you. This scenario is happening now. One of my greener and more energetic colleagues has his own solar panels and windmill wired into his home for power and water when required during the day. He sells the power back to the local utility when he is not using it (admittedly for a few pennies, at this stage) – all built into his intelligent home.

People are supposedly using this economic slowdown to retool and re orient their economies to smarter and more efficient technologies (apart from Australia, that is. Instead it is building up more debt by proffering cash to the punters to hit K-Mart and Target to buy Plasma TVs and hit the pub - but let’s not go into this).

You can clearly see this area of industry of intelligent buildings expanding rapidly as it makes positive impacts on people’s comfort and provides real $$ savings.

So whatever you call ‘em, they are ‘in’: Intelligent buildings, intelligent homes, automated buildings, smart homes or building management systems. Whether private, commercial or industrial these intelligent buildings include a range of technologies such as energy management systems and building controls. Services provided include: lighting, heating, security, CCTV and alarm systems (for the more nervous amongst us), access control, audio visual and entertainment systems, ventilation, climate control. And even time and attendance control. Whether we like it or not; these changes are becoming more popular and prevalent.

There are two main types of building control systems:

• Time – usage only when required
• "Optimiser Parameter" – for example, using temperature for space heating or level of lighting to control lights.

The origins of intelligent buildings come from the industrial automation and process control systems in the 70’s. The technology was cleverly adapted for usage in buildings with great results. - another example of how technical developments in one sector can be used effectively in another.

Optimising heating is an easy target for intelligent control. It involves time based off and on facilities and is triggered too when a temperature reaches a certain level. Savings of up to 10% can be accomplished on heating with these controls. Lighting too is so easily controllable. It is infuriating to witness massive buildings lit up at 4am in the morning and typical savings can be in the order of 75% of the original load.

Something which is not much discussed, but which worries me somewhat are the safety and failure issues with intelligent buildings. Systems are in place, I am sure, to overcome these, but, for example a person becoming trapped in a burning building because the exit doors were locked. Or smoke impeding vision, the lighting system failing and there is a problem reverting to the manual system. (the electronic control keypad has failed)!

Despite these little anxieties on my part - how can we exploit these marvelous new technologies ?

• Read and talk to your peers more about this rapidly growing field
• Look at how you can apply these technologies in your own facilities and at home
• Examine whether your current technologies can be applied to the intelligent buildings

Although he was probably not thinking of building automation systems; Winston Churchill remarked rather wisely: " We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us"

 Yours in engineering learning

Steve

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Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 04 March 2009

Dear Colleagues

Two items today:

1. Real life cases of motor failures and how they were solved

Late last year we presented brief complimentary webinars on the subject of Avoiding Disasters in Industrial Wireless. This was very popular – we had to add extra sessions to handle the demand.  Now, in keeping with the theme of; Avoiding Engineering Failures, we invite you to join us for the next in this series, entitled: Real Life Cases of Motor Failures and How They Were Solved.

2. How to do outstanding engineering and technical presentations

I often writhe in my seat when I listen to engineering professionals presenting technical content to an audience. These are often boring, unprofessional and generally a complete waste of time for all involved. The engineer frequently sweats profusely and talks to the whiteboard or to some imaginary spot in the room. And is enormously anxious that he or she will be “found out” with an awkward question.

You may ask why engineers bother with presentations at all? Perhaps you are a technologist and feel our focus should be on engineering design or the commissioning of a plant - not on time-consuming presentations. Well; the truth of the matter is that it is through presentations that we get our “engineering world” exposed to a wider and perhaps more appreciative audience. This often results in our own career advancement and, of course, helps gain greater credibility and consequently more business for our firms.

So here you go; a ‘toolbox’ of 5 tips to use when preparing and executing your next engineering presentation. With these you will distinguish yourself.

1. Show real passion for your topic and smile.
In some respects you are engaged in a sales mission. You are trying to sell your audience on what you are presenting. Show enthusiasm and commitment to the topic and real passion. You will sweep them along with you. Smiling counters the normal feeling that this is yet another dull, technical presentation, instead, it suggests something interesting and full of life.

2. Edit ruthlessly.
Don’t swamp your audience with tonnes of material. Limit yourself to 4 or 5 points to a slide. Include a lot of visual information - simple graphics which clarify the material and are easy to interpret. Avoid glitzy sound effects and multimedia pizzaz - this is generally lost on an audience. ‘Talking around’ a slide with a simple graphic is often a very powerful method of communicating. Mix it up a little by scribbling simple messages and graphics onto the whiteboard or flipchart. One of our best instructors refuses to use powerpoint and sketches all his diagrams and text onto a flipchart. He then hangs these sheets of paper all around the room – hundreds by the end of a day. He is generally exhausted after doing this, so watch your energy levels.

3. Listen carefully to your audience and interact with them.
(You often learn far more from your audience than they do from you). Watch their reactions and get them to interact with you. Test their knowledge along the way – a good way of gauging whether or not you are imparting the material successfully. The more the audience interacts with you, and each other, the more memorable an experience it will be for them (and for you) and the more likely it is that they will absorb the content.

4. Use real life samples.
As an engineering professional you will create a far greater impact with real life samples (an old colleague of mine calls them “props”) to support your content – for example; scored valves, blown up circuit breakers, pitted centrifugal pump impellers etc. And use pictures of real equipment in your slides. A demonstration of real stuff operating is a brilliant presentation tool - despite the inconvenience of transporting and assembling the bits at the presentation venue. Simple animations of equipment operating in power point can also be effective; provided they are contained and clear.

5. Practise, practise and then practise again.
Actually this should be the number 1 item in any toolbox of presentation skills. Practise every slide for timing and articulation. Speak slowly and clearly. Don’t rush – you will if you are nervous so make a grand effort to slow down. The more you go over your materials loudly in front of the mirror (or indeed the dog); the more confident you will be in front of your audience. And then you can focus on other issues, such as introducing amusing or interesting anecdotes, rather than simply reading off your slides.

Best of luck with your next technical presentation.

And above all, as Dorothy Sarnoff noted: ‘Make sure you have finished speaking before your audience has finished listening’.
Thanks and acknowledgements to Susan de la Vergne of Alder Business Services for her inspirational article.

Yours in engineering learning,

Steve

Details

Written by: Steve Mackay

Category: Blog - Steve Mackay

Published: 26 February 2009

Dear Colleagues
 
The economic stimulus package that president Obama signed into life last week had an interesting side effect. Most of the jobs created (or protected) require some sort of qualification or degree. According to Higher Ed (2/23, Ledeman), “a minimum of 54% of the 3.7 million jobs created require at least a post secondary certificate”. And a large chunk of the rest, require some sort of specialized training. So even though many of these programs are designed to help the more lowly-skilled and poorly paid, they really end up helping skilled workers. With a little thinking it is easy to list a great many manual jobs that have been replaced by automated machines which are then controlled by skilled operators – generally there seems to be a reduction in demand for low skilled workers.
 
It follows then that you can bet your bottom dollar your investment in your own skills will pay off. I am rather cautious, though, about highly theoretical, academic skills being conducive to further employment. But putting effort into improving your practical know-how and skills is surely a powerful way of staying employed – particularly ‘on-the-job’ experiential type training. I was inspired today after talking to one of our highly experienced power system protection instructors. He is a professional engineer who still seeks to actively improve his skills by reading extensively on technical topics, talking to his peers, attending courses and walking the factory floor (from the UK to North America to Asia) in an effort to observe and understand new manufacturing techniques. And he is poised to turn 80 next month. He has to turn work away “as he hasn’t had time to work in his garden recently”!
 
Although, we are naturally enthused about education and learning, the inimitable Oscar Wilde does sound a warning note: ‘Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught’.

Yours in engineering learning.

Steve