Engineering Disasters
I have an assignment to write. Please give me ideas. I need to write about some engineering failures from history. And I have to write a detailed report about one of them, discussing what went wrong etc. Was it management or design? And I need to be able to look up most of the info off the net of course.
I also have to write about design and construction principles, and aspects of project management. It is easy for me to talk about small details in mechanical engineering, but since this is a Project Management subject I should probably be looking at the big picture.
But the trouble is a top down management structure does not always produce a quality product. Quality often comes from the factory workers that are given the ability to check and fix their own work.
I also have to write about design and construction principles, and aspects of project management. It is easy for me to talk about small details in mechanical engineering, but since this is a Project Management subject I should probably be looking at the big picture.
But the trouble is a top down management structure does not always produce a quality product. Quality often comes from the factory workers that are given the ability to check and fix their own work.
posted by Jonny at 10/04/2007 04:27:00 pm
8 Comments:
Westgate Bridge 1970 comes to mind.
Good top down structure will generally make the bottoms up happier, thus producing better results.
You want to talk to a sociologist about engineering disasters - "Social Skills" is a massive one. There are many of us who have an inability to relate well with the rest of society...
Other disasters include the NASA shuttle explosion, Tacoma Narrows, the Myer fire, the Blackhawks, Microsoft Windows and other similar products. You could look at all the different Aluminium powder plants. Ecka, if I recall correctly, is the only one not to have had a major explosion.
Plenty of others about... You would love to do some first hand reporting of the Myer fire. I can see it in your eyes...
I had started looking at the Westgate Bridge. Apparently the two halves of the bridge didn't line up in the middle, so they used concrete blocks to weigh one half down to meet the other.
It would be a long stretch to call Jeromes advances on a certain woman a "engineering disaster", because she doesn't do engineering.
There would not be enough info on the Myer fire yet, and it dosn't fit neatly into a "engineering project".
The whole Microsoft thing sounds like stand-up comedy from 1995. It's a bit old.
Jonny, are you talking about mostly structural-type failure disasters where loads of people died or can it be more systems-type failure disasters where loads of people died? I think it might be interesting to compare one structural failure with one systems failure to show that the issues are similar -- grandiose goals, poor intermediate assessment, no localized power, etc. What comes to mind are things like the Great Depression in the US, and the Hindenburg, plus more typical "engineering" issues like bridge collapses and Chernobyl.
I think a bridge failure, were it collapsed within the first few years is best. Reports about such things can easily target individual engineers.
The Space Shuttle one is interesting. Some say it came down to a management issue. The Engineers said the shuttle was good for 1 failure in 100 flights. The managers just changed the figure to 1/1000 for the publics sake. Now 2 shuttles gone, the original 1:100 was fairly close.
The Hindenburg is a good one. It was designed to use Helium, but due to global tension at the time (helium came from USA), they used hydrogen instead.
Personaly, I am more interested in the quality of small car parts. And how a car can have a distinct "feel" depending on where in the world it was made.
Aluminium powder coating on the Hindenburg is what made it burn so bright. And all those who died jumped. The survivors stayed aboard.
As for 1995 stand-up comedy, I think many a geek would agree that Microsoft more than capably fulfills its role as a running gag.
My advances on women... hmmm... nothing's sacred anymore is it Jonny.
“…Underestimated the effect on the spacecraft trajectory by a factor of 4.45, which is the required conversion factor from force in pounds to Newtons.”(http://appl.nasa.gov/pdf/47363main_marsclimateorbiter.pdf viewed 4/8/05)
And apparently in one of the shuttle disasters they had issues with the rubber O-rings. Apparently, the morning of the launch it was a wee bit chilly, the O-rings had become brittle and thus failed and so we need another seven astronauts...
Mum and Dad never sent me to space camp. A missed oportunity.
What about that bridge that collapsed in ?Israel at some ?Jewish youth athletics championships ?a few years ago?
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