BeTheSignal
Comment
Bhola_#1
I agree with your comment Eric
MikeLC
Personally I've seen this happen quite frequently in the past decade with some ...
A four hundred year old lesson for today
Eric Bogatin
10/5/2010 11:50 PM EDT
No one responsible
An inquiry was held a month later. After hearing testimony from the captain, the sailors, the shipbuilder and the admiral, no one was ultimately punished for the disaster.
On the morning of April 24, 1961, 333 years after she sank, the Vasa was raised from the sea floor and now is preserved, intact, in the Vasa Museum in Stockholm.
Why did the Vasa sink? Ultimately, it was a combination of being top heavy with too much weight in the masts and the two decks of guns, with not enough ballast. Even the ballast was not designed well. It was composed of round, river rocks which would roll with the ship, adding positive feedback to induce the ship to roll even more.
The legacy of the Vasa, suggests a few pointers for advanced product development that might still apply, almost 400 years later:
An inquiry was held a month later. After hearing testimony from the captain, the sailors, the shipbuilder and the admiral, no one was ultimately punished for the disaster.
On the morning of April 24, 1961, 333 years after she sank, the Vasa was raised from the sea floor and now is preserved, intact, in the Vasa Museum in Stockholm.
Figure 2. The Vasa, brought up from the bay after 333 years and restored to nearly her original condition, on display in the Vasa museum in Stockholm, Sweden.
Why did the Vasa sink? Ultimately, it was a combination of being top heavy with too much weight in the masts and the two decks of guns, with not enough ballast. Even the ballast was not designed well. It was composed of round, river rocks which would roll with the ship, adding positive feedback to induce the ship to roll even more.
Figure 3. A model of the cross section of the Vasa showing the two gun decks and the rock ballast in the keel. Too much weight above the waterline and not enough ballast contributed to her sinking.
The legacy of the Vasa, suggests a few pointers for advanced product development that might still apply, almost 400 years later:
- Express your concerns when management changes the specs in the middle of the product design.
- If you are pushing the envelope of performance, there is no substitute to having an analytical model to accurately predict performance before you commit to hardware.
- When you do have first article and perform test and measurements, use the data to verify how well it matches the predictions and when it doesn’t, use the data to “hack into” the design to determine its limitations.
- Never hesitate voicing your concerns to management. The last thing they want is a surprise.
|
|
|
|
|
Navigate to related information
prabhakar_deosthali
10/6/2010 2:07 AM EDT
Such scenario is applicable to nine out of ten products which are prepared for launch in any company today. This is because the imagination of those who want to market the product races ahead much faster than those responsible to implement the ideas. And most of times we already have a competition which has the similar product already in the market. In the haste to beat the competition we forget that we have to first catch up with the competition. The result is a big fiasco as the product delivers on ideas but fails on perfromance or the product is well built and robust and the market trend has already moved away from the product.
Sign in to Reply
Robotics Developer
10/6/2010 7:49 PM EDT
I had a boss that used to say "That's why we pay you the big bucks!" when the impossible needed to be designed in no time with limited resources. It seems that everyone has experienced this type of program car wreck. What are some of your past stories? We had a marketing group that promised a new processor that was 1/3 the size, had added support for double precision floating point math, and at a target price of 1/10th! Needless to say we informed the powers that be: You can have speed, power, size PICK TWO!...
Sign in to Reply
Frank Eory
10/12/2010 4:17 PM EDT
Funny, I had a boss that used to say "We're going to leapfrog the competition", also in no time and with limited resources.
What that really meant was we were about to engage in a game of Frogger!
Sign in to Reply
JMWilliams
10/7/2010 2:31 PM EDT
A similar event occurred in 1545, when the English ship of the line Mary Rose capsized because she was top-heavy. She was maneuvering during a sea battle, rolled too far, her gun ports took on water, and she sank with over 90% casualties.
A more directly relevant example of requirements creep was the Messerschmitt ME-262 jet fighter. This plane could have been manufactured in large numbers in about 1943, but Hitler kept demanding more and more diverse functionality -- light bomber capability, dive-bombing, etc. Happily for the free world, this airplane was not ready for combat until early 1945, too late to have any effect on the outcome of World War II.
Sign in to Reply
balu1n
10/14/2010 10:21 PM EDT
Another aspect of the ego of bosses is that it affects many people's career. Such bosses' only aim is to gain publicity with minimum understanding of the issues and details (that also will be blamed on the staff anyway!). Whe it works, it is him, and when it fails, it is the staff.
Sign in to Reply
DrQuine
10/14/2010 11:08 PM EDT
"Speak Truth Unto Power" was good advice and remains good advice. It saves lives, money, and even enables corrective action to be taken in a timely manner. It just requires courage.
Sign in to Reply
docdivakar
10/20/2010 12:41 PM EDT
The product owners must balance between time to market, performance, cost, reliability and most important, safety of the product in its operating environment. But often, marketing ends up in the driving seat, has its way and the results are well enunciated by stories like these.
It is most important for engineers to speak up. No matter how smart we get with all the software tools and computing devices, there is no substitute to sheer commonsense!
@Eric, I concur with you 100%, simulate the most you can in any design! I am a firm believer in that and do all the time.
Dr. MP Divakar
Sign in to Reply
ReneCardenas
10/26/2010 12:52 PM EDT
In MHO this is one of many stories that reflect on the weak side of human endeavors, nobody should be surprised that this tale will continue to repeat itself, as long as the product/system is based on aggressive irrational schedules, and the innate weakness in every individual overwhelmed with power, that fails to balance his wishes with a doze of reality checks.
Sign in to Reply
MikeLC
10/31/2010 2:36 AM EDT
Personally I've seen this happen quite frequently in the past decade with some companies that I am no longer associated with. I agree with you that it is likely to be repeated, but wish it wasn't so.
Sign in to Reply
Bhola_#1
10/31/2010 10:39 PM EDT
I agree with your comment Eric
Sign in to Reply