Jane M Fraser

Source: US Library of Congress. This image is in the public domain. “Astra, Red Cross health fairy, brings gifts of health principles from the milky way to the juniors of the Prince School, Boston. The health fairy, who serves the Boston Metropolitan Chapter, is at the right, standing. Pupils of the school, members of the Junior Red Cross, who assisted her in a health play program given recently at the school, as they appear in the picture.” February 1922.

What’s new?

Inspired by Ray Dalio’s 2017 bestselling book Principles, performance coach Brad Stulberg put together his own list of principles as “a foundation for a better you.” Pocket brought it to my attention.

What does it mean?

A 2013 review of Jessica Lamb Shapiro’s book on the self-help industry in the United States, Promise Land, cites “an Ancient Egyptian genre called ‘Sebayt,’ an instructional literature on life (‘Sebayt’ means ‘teaching’)” as the “progenitor of self-help books.” I haven’t been in a bookstore for over a year, but I am sure that the self-help section at my local Barnes and Noble store still stretches over many shelves.

I haven’t read any of these books by Lamb Shapiro, Dalio, or Stulberg. For a description of the book by Ray Dalio, founder of investment firm Bridgewater Associates, I am relying heavily on this article by Elle McFarlane. She reviews the book’s contents and Dalio’s five principles, including “Use the 5-step process to get what you want out of life.” That process has five stages:

1. Having clear goals
2. Identifying the problems that prevent you from achieving these goals
3. Getting to the root cause of these problems
4. Designing plans to help you overcome these root causes
5. Enforcing these plans to get your desired results .

Stulberg, inspired by Dalio, created a list of eight principles, including: Focus on the Process, Not Results (“Research shows that concentrating on the process is best for both performance and mental health”); Take Small, Consistent Steps to Achieve Big Gains (“Small and consistent victories compound over time, leading to massive gains”), and Make the Hard Thing Easier (“Rather than relying completely on self-control, intentionally design your environment to make the hard thing easier”).

When I taught the course Introduction to Industrial and Systems Engineering at Colorado State University-Pueblo for many years, I required students to read and report on a book, chosen from a list I provided or approved by me if not on the list. One of those books was The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen R. Covey. His seven habits include Habit 2: Begin With the End in Mind. “Habit 2 is based on imagination–the ability to envision in your mind what you cannot at present see with your eyes. It is based on the principle that all things are created twice. There is a mental (first) creation, and a physical (second) creation.”

What does it mean for you?

I am sure you have already noted that some of these personal principles echo strongly organizational principles. What works well for self-improvement also works for group-improvement.

I am an industrial engineer. My elevator speech to answer the question “what is industrial engineering?” is that industrial engineers are about efficiency, quality, and safety. We design the workplace so that ordinary people can achieve extraordinary results. Chapter 2 of the textbook I wrote for my introductory course lists “Big ideas you will hear frequently” and some of these ideas about industrial engineering could fit comfortably into any self-help list (“Small incremental improvements of a process add up, but more radical reengineering may sometimes be needed”).

Dalio’s five-step process is very similar to Six Sigma’s improvement cycle (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control). Stulberg’s focus on the process is one of the core ideas of industrial engineering (in my book, I wrote: “The process for doing a task makes a big difference in how efficiently, well, and safely the task is done”). Taking small consistent steps is another way to describe continue improvement. Making Hard Things Easier is poke yoke or error-proofing. Many of these principles also take a systems view; for example, Dalio’s first principle is to understand reality.

What works well for self-improvement also works for group-improvement. Rather than relying on one of these gurus to provide you with a list of principles for how you want to act in your personal life and in your organization, I challenge you to learn from them (and many others) to create your own set of principles that you use to improve your personal life and your organization. What are your guiding principles for improvement of self and improvement of your organization?

Where can you learn more?

Of course there are many web pages that will give you advice on creating your principles or your core values and even lists of principles you can select from (101 Timeless Principles to Guide You to Your Best Life). For some reason, most lists of principles have an odd number of items (5, 7, 101), but Stulberg has 8. Make of that what you will.

Of course actions must reflect principles. As Patrick Lencioni wrote in 2002: “Enron—although an extreme case—is hardly the only company with a hollow set of values.”

Of course there is a contrary view: Why You Shouldn’t Be A Person Of Principle. Moral particularism points out that any set of ethical principles may seem fine. “But then you run into that odd, unexpected situation where following your rulebook doesn’t seem so neat and tidy. This new case is special, unique, and unanticipated by your ethical system. In fact, it just feels wrong to follow the rules here in this instance. Do you go with your rulebook, or your current intuition?” One of my guiding principles is: know the rules, choose which ones to follow, and live with the consequences.

Source: The US Library of Congress, 1942 July. This image is in the public domain.

“Women in war. Machine gun production. Intent on the important job at hand, Elsie M. Terry uses a precision snap gauge on the machine gun part she has milled. One of 2,000 women employed by a Midwest plant, converted from spark plugs to machine gun manufacture, Mrs. Terry typified the American woman war worker. Serious, skilled and reliable, she is making an invaluable contribution to the war effort. A.C. Spark Plugs”

What’s new?

A December 2020 article from Modern Machine Shop, which somehow just caught my attention, says that a company acquisition has to focus on the human aspects to be successful.

What does it mean?

The article, by Christina M Fuges of MoldMaking Technology reports on the company B-Square Precision Group, founded by two individuals (Mark Beck and Tony Butler) with the plan to acquire a portfolio of companies in high precision manufacturing. The article touches on many trends, including the impending retirement of many owners of smaller shops, manufacturing approaches such as lean and ISO certification, and strategies for portfolio construction, such as combining companies that can cross sell each other’s capabilities. The central idea of the article is the need to focus on people.

With its goal of acquiring other companies, B-Square has many people issues to pay attention to, since the retiring managers and the continuing employees of acquired companies often legitimately fear that the company will be broken up, that cost cutting measure will be implemented and will degrade work enjoyment, and that any existing company culture will be brushed aside.  

The B-Square approach includes the importance of training employees, initially and on an ongoing basis, putting safety first in the list of five metrics to be tracked, improvements to pay and benefits, improvements to shop conditions, and increasing collaboration within the company.

What does it mean for you?

Precision manufacturing requires high end machines and highly skilled workers, so one could argue that the focus on the humans in B-Square is necessary to retain employees and to maintain the necessarily high level of skill, but I argue that all companies could benefit from treating their workers as highly skilled and as valuable. I have never worked in restaurants (my partner Mark has) but I know that high levels of skill in the kitchen and on the floor result in a much better customer experience. On the other end, as a highly skilled professional, I have been appalled to realize several times in my career that my employer viewed me as simply another professor, easily replaced and not really needing to be nurtured.

Management advice often focuses on how to treat workers, with emphasis on teams, incentives, and more. The risk, I think, is platitudes. An encouraging feature of this article is a quote from an employee: “Mark and Tony stress that it’s not about them. It’s not about me. It’s not about management. It’s about the team,” suggesting that the management in this case is acting, not just talking.

Engineering has a long history of recognizing the importance of humans in systems. My field, industrial and systems engineering is a leader, with specialties in human factors, cognitive engineering, and ergonomics. The electrical engineering society IEEE has a division called Systems, Man, and Cybernetics. While the second and third words in that trio have not aged well, the name lives on.  

The truth is that all production systems are systems of technology and humans. You imperil the success of the system by underemphasis on either of those pieces, from the simple fact that people have to use the technology correctly to gain the benefits, through to more sophisticated ideas about using technology to augment what workers do (from decision support systems through heads up displays for pilots). If you want technology to work for you, you must have a high level of attention to the humans in the system. Technology works best when it is considered as part of the system of machines and humans.

Where can you learn more?

You can learn much about how to view systems of machines and people through many fields. Search for phrases such as socio technical systems (applied, for example, in healthcare), human factors (this blog post explains four approaches to that topic), and cognitive engineering. Recent developments have highlighted how automation and AI (artificial intelligence) should work together with humans; see, for example, new ideas on augmented workers.

Almost all approaches to systems thinking include humans in the system.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Source: Wikimedia. This image is in the public domain.

What’s new?

At Engineering360, technical writer Janeita Reid writes about the use of sensors throughout the electrical grid, from generation to use.

What does it mean?

My father was one of the chief architects of TASI, the multiplexing system used in the first transatlantic telephone cable system in 1956. The principles of Time Assignment Speech Interpolation had been known but could not be implemented with slow, bulky, over-heating vacuum tubes; the invention of the transistor in 1947 enabled the application of these principles.  But the invention of the transistor built upon and then required more engineering developments in order to lead to the mass manufacturer of transistors which supported developments such as TASI.  

The invention and development of modern electronics continues to enable more inventions and developments. Rarely if ever does one simple device appear in a flash of genius and lead immediately to new uses. Instead, a soup of swirling ideas and devices leads to constant improvement in the ability of devices to sense, compute, and control other devices. You can see these results in the small computer you use every day, your cell phone, with its amazing ability to help you to communicate, to navigate, and to find information.  

The Department of Engineering that I chaired at Colorado State University-Pueblo offers engineering degrees in two areas: industrial engineering and mechatronics. (To be clear, the two undergraduate degrees are the BS in industrial engineering and the BS in engineering with specialization in mechatronics). Industrial engineering is about designing systems to support efficiency, quality, and safety. Mechatronics combines mechanical and electrical engineering with computer programming to create useful devices. The two fields overlap in many ways; one is their overlap in the use of sensors to collect data, data that can be analyzed for long term systems improvement and for real time decision making.

The essence of mechatronics is the creation of devices that sense, compute, and control. The essence of industrial engineering is using information to improve the operation of systems. When developments that were originally a topic of advanced research in labs such as those at Bell Labs become embodied in undergraduate engineering degrees, you know that progress has been made.

One of Ms Reid’s opening sentences, “Advanced sensors are among transformative disruptors building the case of distributed energy resource systems paired with superior data-driven optimization capabilities,” supports the story I have told. Mechatronic devices, especially the sensors inside them, are the keys that enable better decision making, especially using the optimization techniques of operations research, a part of industrial engineering. She then describes the role of sensors and optimization in power generation (via wind, sun, biomass, and water), power transmission, and power use.

What does it mean for you?

The soup of swirling ideas and devices include sensors and optimization as well as much more. These ideas and devices are revolutionizing the provision of electric power and, as Ms. Reid concludes, enabling the transition to renewable energy. She also touches on the interesting dynamic between decentralization and centralization. Electrical generation can be increasingly less centralized, but sensors support remote control and management of those assets.

Whatever your organization, you should be watching for such trends in sensing, computation, and control to support better decision making. These trends enable you to have a better real time knowledge of what is happening throughout your organization and the system in which it operates. Your approach can start, for example, with Internet searches set up as alerts, to keep you aware of what is happening in your field. What other sensors can you set up for your organization?

Where can you learn more?

 Engineering360 has an impressive list of sensors here, with links to more information for each.

The website of the US Department of Energy is one good place to follow trends in energy, especially renewable energy and changes to the grid.

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What’s new?

I published the first issue of Make Technology Work for You one year ago, on 9 May 2020.

What does it mean?

I started this blog with several goals in mind, but mainly out of curiosity about what it feels like to write to self-imposed deadline every week. I was certainly familiar with the pressures of teaching a course that met two or three times a week, so I thought writing a blog might be similar, but I wasn’t sure if I would be able to maintain the blog as being retired grew on me. I am certainly active in my retirement, so I didn’t really need to have another activity, but writing was attractive.

Secondarily, I thought I had things to say that others might want to read. As the heading on this blog says, I have “40 years’ experience teaching engineering and a lifelong interest in technology.” I hoped that I could help make technology interesting and useful for others.

So what has happened in the last year with me and with this blog?

When I started, the week had a high level of panic. Once I identified a topic each week, the panic level went down and once I published on each Saturday morning, it disappeared. For about two hours. I have always been good at keeping up the pressure on myself and at worrying and the blog did become a cycle of worry. However, as with teaching, the worry (it is no longer panic) has become an old friend. Once I have identified a topic (often early in the week, even sometimes on Sunday, sometimes as late as Thursday), I enjoy thinking about what I will write. When I finally sit down to write, I find that I have whole paragraphs almost ready in my head.

Identifying a topic has become harder, much to my surprise. Some reliable sources (newsletters) have fewer interesting articles; some new sources have emerged and others have faded. I structure the blog around a current news article, so I am restricted to topics that have been mentioned in some news source in the previous week, but that is not a great limitation, of course. Am I running out of things to say? I don’t think so, but I am puzzled about why I am having more trouble identifying topics.

I worry that I have become repetitive and that I wrote only on the same topics over and over (additive manufacturing, for example). Since I love data, my obvious approach was to make a database and analyze the data. I reread each blog post and coded the contents into categories, with multiple categories allowed for a single post. This table shows some results.

My top topic, certainly not to my surprise, is Systems. Yes, that is my top topic; that is how I think, how I analyze, and how I view the world. You should have that as your top topic, too. As an industrial engineer and as someone active in the maker community, I was also not surprised that my second topic was Manufacturing/makers/making.  The topics that all got 5 to 8 entries were also no surprises, although I sometimes feel that I am obsessed with additive manufacturing and writing too much about it. I am pleased to find that all the topics in this table, save one, are topics about which I write positively; I am in favor of the world doing more of all of these. The exception is Artificial intelligence, where my postings were sometimes positive but sometimes cautious about hype.

What have I learned and how will I proceed in the future of this blog?

I remain committed to finding a good image to head each blog and to using only images in the public domain or licensed for public use. Wikimedia Commons and the Library of Congress continue to be my reliable source of excellent images. They have almost never failed me. I have also used my own photos occasionally. Only once did I omit an image. On 9 January, 2021, I wrote about the crashes of the Boeing 737 Max and was unable to find a publicly licensed image of any of the crashes. I really like the animated images I have been able to use a few times, most recently comparing vertical axis and horizontal axis wind turbines.

I remain committed to never writing about military technology, a decision I made before my first post. A former colleague once said that military technology is not engineering since engineering must be for the benefit of mankind; war is never of such benefit. Since this colleague comes from a country that was bombed by the United States (that statement does not narrow down his country of origin much), I respect and value his opinion.

I remain committed to posting a typo-free blog and have done fairly well. In rereading all the articles, I did find a few typos I missed, but not many.

I remain committed to taking stances and giving my opinion. I am not just giving information about technology, although I always want to educate. I am also evaluating that technology for its usefulness for you and for its usefulness to society.

I find I am losing my commitment to publishing by 7 am on Saturday; I have failed to meet that goal several times (including today) and it doesn’t bother me. I apologize if it bothers you.

Finally, I remain committed to writing a weekly blog. I enjoy writing this blog, even when I am having trouble finding a topic.  In the last year, I missed only one day (25 July 2020) during the week I was attending virtually the annual meeting of the Engineering Accreditation Commission (ABET-EAC). For some reason that I don’t remember, I have two postings dated 9 May 2020, my first day of blogging. Thus, I have posted 52 posts in the last year. I also remain committed to using the structure I established in my first post: What’s new? What does it mean? What does it mean for you? And Where can you learn more?

I am still musing about building readership, advertising my blog, and monetizing my blog. I care most, I think, about having my words be meaningful and helpful to others, so I will think more about how to accomplish that goal.

What does it mean for you?

Only you can tell me that. Please leave a comment below or email me at janemfraserphd@gmail.com. I look forward to hearing from you.

Where can you learn more?

I use WordPress with the WEN Business Pro theme. I had to learn how to use WordPress and I like it.

Optinmonster publishes this list of blogging statistics.  Blogging Wizard has more blogging facts.

3 October 2021. Ritta Blens suggested another good resource about blogs and blogging. Thank you, Ritta.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Source: Wikimedia. This figure is in the public domain.

What’s new?

The Engineer reported that a recent article in the journal Renewable Energy used computer simulation to conclude that vertical axis wind turbines can be clustered together to increase total energy output, unlike traditional horizontal axis wind turbines.

What does it mean?

The two basic types of wind turbines differ by how the turbine rotates when the wind is blowing. In the example in the center of the figure at the top of this blog, the three blades rotate around a horizontal axis, that is, an axis perpendicular to the figure and parallel to the ground; it is a horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT). In the two others, the rotation is around a a vertical axis, that an axis that is parallel to the figure and perpendicular to the ground; each of these two examples is a vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT).

HAWTs are increasingly used to generate electricity, but a well known problem is that, in an array of such turbines, the turbines first struck by the wind generate turbulence that reduces the energy able to be captured by trailing turbines. Previous research had shown that VAWTs seem to have the opposite effect, in which the capture of energy by trailing turbines is actually enhanced by the earlier turbines. Note that, of course, no combination of turbines can capture more energy than the total energy contained in the wind.

Computers have enabled many wonderful accomplishments for us (my latest is the Merlin bird identification app on my phone). For engineers, computer simulation is a wonderful tool. Computer simulation enables us to create a mathematical model of a real world system, described in computer code, and then to perform experiments on that model.  A crucial part of simulation is to validate the model, that is, to compare its output with data from the actual system in order to confirm that it faithfully models the real world in the crucial measurements. Depending on how realistic the underlying model is, we can then make predictions about how actual devices will perform in the real world.

In this article, the engineers created a two-dimensional CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) model of a field of VAWTs, performed experiments by changing the layout of the turbines, and then predicted what will occur with real turbines. Obviously, they can perform many more experiments at much less cost than if they did the experiments with actual turbines.

Engineering improves products in three ways: design, manufacture, and use. In the design of a wind turbine, the engineers select a HAWT or VAWT, decide on the size and shape of the blades, determine the height of the tower, select materials for each part of the device, and so forth. In manufacture, engineers select and then continuously improve the processes for making each part, for assembling the device, and for installing it at its location. Finally, engineers make decisions about when the turbine will be operated, how its output will be used within the larger electric grid, select and implement a maintenance schedule, and eventually decide when to take the device out of service. The article in Renewable Energy is an example of improvements in the use of the turbines, that is, in their layout, but it also illustrates how design and use are interrelated. Renewable energy is coming on like gangbusters because of changes in design, manufacture, and use.

What does it mean for you?

Computer simulation is an amazing tool. The minute you ask any question starting with “what if …?” you should think about using a computer simulation. As an industrial engineer, I know about the use of stochastic simulations (ones that incorporate random events) for modeling production systems, enabling the asking and answering of “what if?” questions about inventory, equipment layout, scheduling, and more.

One of the most important facts about a computer simulation, which I have mentioned already, is that the results are only as good as the ability of the model to replicate the real world. I tell my students that they must practice saying, to themselves and to others, “it’s only a model,” said with a shrug of the shoulders. Engineers can all too easily fall into the trap of saying “the VAWT array functioned best in this layout,” when they really mean “the simulation of the VAWT array functioned best in this layout.” As George Box is often quoted as saying, “all models are wrong; some are useful.” You must be wary of engineers – and others – who aren’t careful in their language about predictions from models.

Renewable energy is coming on like gangbusters. Whether this progress and others will be fast enough and sufficient to save the world remains to be seen.

Where can you learn more?

This is my second blog post titled “It’s only a model.” The first one is here.

IISE (the Institute of Industrial & Systems Engineers) has a Division devoted to modeling and simulation. There are many useful computer packages: AnyLogic, Arena, Flexsim, Simio, Simul8, and more. The Winter Simulation Conference is a great source of current information about theory and application. Industrial engineering overlaps with many business areas and computer simulations can also be used, for example, in financial forecasting.

Engineering simulation can be used any time the mathematical equations describing a real world system are too complicated to be solved in general; they are instead solved numerically for the specific case being studied and are often solved using approximations. The applications and computer packages are too numerous to list.

This page from the US Department of Energy gives a good overview of developments in wind turbines.

If you aren’t seriously worried about global climate change, this page from NASA should do it for you.  

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Source: Wikimedia. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

What’s new?

Interesting Engineering reported that the CEO of Turkish cryptocurrency exchange Thodex fled to Thailand with $2 billion of crypto assets, leaving 400,000 users of the exchange in the lurch.

What does it mean?

Blockchain is a computer technology that prevents changes from being made to a series of records; the most important features of blockchain are distributed storage and a type of internal consistency (one block of data is related numerically to the previous block, hence “block chain”). If someone wanted to change a record in a blockchain, they would have to change the record in many, many locations, and would have to change many, many records in order to maintain the internal consistency of the records. Blockchain thus can prevent certain types of fraud, that is, fraud in which records are altered. Blockchain creates unalterable accounting records. Blockchain is currently used for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, that is, currencies created and maintained as computer records.

Most implementations of blockchain rely on proof of work to establish and maintain the records. When a new record is added, blockchain sites perform long and complicated calculations (following the internal consistency rules) to add the record; the first site to present proof of the completion of that work, called mining, is rewarded with additional cryptocurrency.

Blockchain protects against only certain types of fraud, that is, fraud involving the changing of accounting records. Blockchain will not prevent many other types of fraud. In fact, the whole area of cryptocurrency has a great deal of fraud; an Internet search on the words “blockchain fraud” or “blockchain scam” will turn up many examples.

Consider, as an example, an area of fraud I was concerned with for my 40 years as a professor of engineering: cheating by students. Blockchain could protect against recorded grades being changed fraudulently, a type of fraud that does occur. I am aware of several such cases that were detected and there are probably others that went undetected. But cheating by students takes many other forms, none of which would be prevented or detected by blockchain, for example, someone copying another’s work on homework or during a test.

Blockchain is also touted as useful for verifying someone’s identity and for establishing trust in business dealings with unknown partners, but I suspect that the actual usefulness is more limited than the hype and that other computer technologies can accomplish such goals. The mathematics of computational complexity, which I discussed two weeks ago in this blog post, underlie all these technologies for computer security.

What does it mean for you?

Blockchain, as with many new technologies is the subject of much hype, some of which is misleading and even incorrect. For example, this article at Forbes says:  “Were the expensive free-range eggs we purchased really created at a free-range farm?  Was the gold ring I bought online really made with 24K gold? Companies can combat fraud with blockchain by verifying the legitimacy of every part of the supply chain process, helping both the buyer and manufacturer. You’ll never have to question that organic produce and those free-range eggs.”

I disagree. Nothing in blockchain can prevent someone from, at any point in the supply chain, substituting eggs from caged chickens for eggs from free-range chickens, just as nothing in blockchain can prevent a student from looking over the shoulder of another student during a test.

Blockchain does have important uses. The immutable nature of blockchain records is an important feature in maintaining security. But most hacking episodes involve stealing private records, not altering such records.

I am not addressing here the huge amount of electricity required for the proof of work aspect of blockchain (see, for example, “Bitcoin consumes ‘more electricity than Argentina’”) because, I am told by my local blockchain expert, other methods of blockchain do not rely on proof of work. I am also not addressing the independence of blockchain from regulations or governments (as part of crypto anarchism, for example), which others cite as an attractive feature; one upshot is that your recourse in the case of fraud and scam are limited. And, whatever you do, don’t lose your password; if you do, you lose your assets.

Where can you learn more?

This 2018 article “Blockchain is not a silver bullet for fraud prevention” is still very useful. Here is another article cautioning about the hype. This December 2020 article in Finance Magnates blames the lack of a killer application outside of cryptocurrencies for the failure of blockchain to achieve its promises. This December 2019 article uses a Gartner diagram of the phases of hype to speculate that blockchain will be useful five to ten years from now. This piece in TechBeacon lays out in detail some of the pitfalls of blockchain.

Some argue that blockchain eliminates the need to rely on trust  in business transactions, but this article by noted cryptographer Bruce Schneir points out that trust is always needed. He asks “Would you rather trust a human legal system or the details of some computer code you don’t have the expertise to audit?” He includes this image tweeted by Internet pioneer Vinton Cerf:

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Source: I used a portion of this image at Wikimedia. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

What’s new?

An article from GlobalSpec Engineering360 combines some of my favorite topics: new materials, the element carbon, and additive manufacturing. This article was just one of many I read this week on additive manufacturing.

What does it mean?

Plastics and carbon nanotubes were combined in a new internal configuration to create a material with improved strength, toughness and stiffness, and lighter weight. Such a material could have significant application in replacing metals in vehicles.

One useful piece of technology in the Star Trek science fiction series was the replicator, used to create food, including Captain Picard’s Earl Grey tea. This article taught me that it was also used to create spare parts and items for consumption on the Holodeck simulation and that “By virtually eliminating material scarcity, replicator technology plays an important role in the moneyless human economy within the Star Trek universe.” This article expands even more about how it was used. The physical explanation (“matter-energy conversion”) is suitable for science fiction but not for science.

Regular readers of this blog know that I am interested in additive manufacturing. My interests include the technical aspects of the new materials and include the technical aspects of how the new materials are created, but also include the potential for changing supply chains, manufacturing, and our economy. While the abundance enabled by the Star Trek replicator is still science fiction, the future may involve using a limited number of feedstocks to create consumer products on demand, close to the final consumer. Your local big box store will be a manufacturing facility, turning carbon (and other materials) into products.

What does it mean for you?

Manufacturers should be excited about the potential for additive manufacturing to change their processes as well as the processes of their suppliers. The technology is changing the economics of additive manufacturing enough that it can now be used for small batches and larger batches as well, enabling customization in mass manufacturing.

But manufacturers should also be cautious: parts made with additive manufacturing are different. The article I cited above points out that the new material creates objects with different strength, toughness, stiffness, and weight. Careful thought must be given to the implications of these changes in use: for example, decreased weight may be a benefit for shipping, but may create issues in the ability of an object to remain stationary in wind. Is lighter weight lawn furniture always desirable? In addition, additive manufactured parts are usually created in layers and thus can tend to delaminate, with implications for durability.

Also, replacing conventionally made parts with those made by additive manufacturing can have other implications. Because additive manufacturing can create parts with shapes that were difficult to make by other manufacturing processes, an assembly of parts may possibly be made as one part, as explained here, with implications for the manufacturing work flow and for the workforce.

I often note that fasteners are a sometimes overlooked part of engineering design. This article explores how traditional fasteners (screws, for example) work with parts made with additive manufacturing and this article explains that the fastener may need to be selected to add strength to thinner parts made by additive manufacturing.

I hope that you share my excitement about additive manufacturing, but I also hope that you share my caution.

Where can you learn more?

While I subscribe to some email lists that tend toward coverage of a wide range of additive manufacturing, generally still in the research stage, applications of additive manufacturing that are actually being put into practice are probably more likely to be found in conferences and publications for that industry, such as the Food Automation and Manufacturing Conference and Expo. Food Technology Magazine had this 2020 article on how 3-D printing and other technologies may change the production of food.

Some sites that cover additive manufacturing, for example Additive Manufacturing Media, do have good articles on specific industries, such as this recent one on 3-D printing furniture.

I tend to use the phrase “additive manufacturing” as being more descriptive of the technology, but an Internet search should also try the term “3-D printing” since it is widely used.

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Source: Wikimedia. This image is in the public domain.

An illustration of a mathematical optimization problem with two decision variables (shown on the horizontal and vertical axes), three constraints (shown in black, teal, and purple), and a linear objective function (shown in red) that is to be maximized. The optimal solution is 130 for the variable on the horizontal axis and 20 for the variable on the vertical axis; that solution yields a value of 49,000 for the objective function.

What’s new?

As reported by Nature and phys.org, the 2021 Abel prize was awarded to mathematicians László Lovász and Avi Wigderson for their work on computational complexity.

What does it mean?

If, like me, you enjoy putting together jigsaw puzzles, you know that every puzzle is labeled with an important number: the number of pieces. That number is a fairly good predictor of how much time it will take you to put together the puzzle. Once the puzzle is done, you know you have solved it correctly simply by seeing that the resulting picture is complete. You have found the unique, best solution.

Much of what computers do takes the form of solving mathematical puzzles: finding the best route for a delivery van, assigning flight crew members to flights in the best way, assigning jobs to machines in a production facility, deciding on the best way to cut a tree trunk into lumber, and so forth. For many mathematical puzzles, like the jigsaw puzzle, the size of the puzzle is a fairly good predictor of how long the puzzle will take to solve, and for some – but not all such mathematical puzzles – when you have found the best answer, you can easily confirm that the answer is the best.

The field that deals with solving mathematical puzzles like these is called optimization (notice the use of the word “best” in each of the stated puzzles above) and the field that studies the difficulty of such puzzles (how long will the puzzle take to solve) is called computational complexity.

In optimization, the puzzles we solve are expressed in mathematical form. We want to select values of decision variables to maximize or minimize an objective function (expressed as a function of the decision variables) while meeting all of the constraints of the problem (expressed as inequalities or equations, again as functions of the decision variables). In my June 27, 2020, blog on operations research I wrote about linear programming as an example, where the objective function and constraints are all linear functions of the decision variables, but other puzzles we want to solve may not be linear. Also, in some puzzles, the values of the decision variables are restricted to be integers (that is, numbers with no decimal part): you can’t assign 0.8 of a crew member to a flight, for example.

Computers solve these problems by using algorithms: an algorithm tells the computer program exactly what to do and the computer chunks away and eventually tells you the best solution to the problem. The issue is how long it will take the computer to find the best solution, and in some cases the answer is disappointing: more time than the total time so far in the universe. Imagine a jigsaw so big that it would take almost forever to complete. In such cases, we may need to use a heuristic, which is a method that can get us an answer to such problems that may not be the best answer, but that we know it is a good answer.

In some puzzles, when you have found the best answer, you can easily confirm that the answer is the best. If, by luck, you pick up a jigsaw puzzle piece and it clicks into place, you know you are correct. With some mathematical puzzles, introducing randomness into the heuristic can speed up the process of finding a good, even best answer.

As the Nature article on the Abel prize says: “But since the advent of computers in the twentieth century, the emphasis in research has changed from ‘can an algorithm solve this problem?’ to ‘can an algorithm, at least in principle, solve this problem on an actual computer and in a reasonable time?’”

The winners of the Abel prize contributed to the solution of mathematical puzzles and to the field of computational complexity. Lovász has contributed to the solution of mathematical puzzles that can be expressed as movement on a network, seeking the best solution. Wigderson’s contributions relate to the use of randomness in finding solutions and relate to so-called zero-knowledge proofs, a way of proving that a puzzle has been solved without actually revealing the solution.

What does it mean for you?

Computers do more and more for us every day (just take a look at your cell phone), often relying on algorithms and heuristics to solve mathematical puzzles. We want them to solve bigger and bigger problems, so the answer is always, get a faster or bigger computer, but computational complexity helps the designers of algorithms know when a faster computer is likely to be successful and when the problems are simply too big to tackle. The results of computational complexity are important in guiding this work.

Paradoxically, sometimes we want to design problems that will take an enormous amount of time to solve; that idea forms the basis for most computer security. Guessing your 16-character password is beyond the reach of most computers. Complexity theory underlies cybersecurity and encryption, the methods that are meant to keep your information safe from attack. It also forms the computational basis of crypto currencies such as Bitcoin.

Where can you learn more?

The Britannica article on optimization is a nice introduction to the field, including some history. This article from Forbes discusses the types of business problems that can be solved by mathematical optimization. The professional organization INFORMS is one of several for professionals in optimization and computational complexity; they have an excellent history of mathematical optimization here.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Source: Wikimedia.This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

What’s new?

One of my former graduate students is now fairly high up at Facebook Reality Labs and she sent me an Oculus Quest 2 (also a charger and an Elite Strap). I have now subscribed to Supernatural and I am exercising more than I have in decades.

What does it mean?

The Oculus Quest 2 is a fairly bulky, but surprisingly light, set of goggles and two controllers, one held in each hand. Activation requires a Facebook account and use requires a wifi signal. Supernatural requires the associated phone app. Setup was trouble free for me. An Oculus Quest 2 costs $300 for 64GB storage and $400 for 256GB, including shipping in the US. A Supernatural subscription costs $179 for a year.

In Supernatural, I can select from exercise videos of High, Medium, and Low intensity (and from meditation videos) of various duration (from as short as 8 minutes to as long as 45 minutes). Inside my goggles, I am placed in a beautiful outdoor location (including one on Mars). I appear to be standing on a computer-generated mat, usually several feet off the ground. I can move to look around and up and down in the scene. A new video is issued each day and hundreds of old ones are available. I have created a list of my favorites.

The exercise routine starts with a warmup from a coach who is located on a computer-generated mat about 10 feet in front me and then consists of several songs (usually rock, pop, hip-hop, etc.). During the routines, my hand controllers appear to be light sabers (called bats in Supernatural) with which I strike at oncoming spheres, black for targets to be struck by the black bat in my left hand and white for the white bat in my right hand. My accuracy and power scores are recorded and reported to me between songs and at the end of the session, which ends with a cool down from the coach. During the entire session, the coach’s voice provides encouraging (and sometimes amusing) comments.  

The quality of the vision is remarkable. I have set my initial room in Oculus to a place in a Japanese inn, with a view of an outside street scene and nearby pond of fish. When I move around, the view changes with 3D fidelity. The sound is also very good. When I am standing in the exercise mat in Supernatural, several feet off the ground, I have to keep reminding myself I am standing solidly on my house floor. I have my goggles adjusted so I get a slight view of my real floor if I glance down past my nose, keeping me oriented.

For use while standing, as I do in Supernatural, the Oculus interface requires me to set a safety perimeter in which there are no objects, and it generates a visual signal if I move any part of my body outside that perimeter. Because its use is linked to a Facebook account, privacy issues arise. A friend created a second Facebook account just to use with Oculus.

I have gone through three waves of emotion concerning Supernatural. First, I immediately loved it: this is fun! The movements, the dance, and the exercise all felt great. Then, as I got used to it, I started to pay attention to the two scores: accuracy in hitting targets and power, scored relative to expectations based on my most recent performance. I started to try to get 100% accuracy and high power scores. I hurt my shoulders and the fun decreased. Now I am back to focusing on the fun and ignoring the scores. The strikes and movements are, I now realize, really well choreographed and I focus on feeling that movement. I am back to: this is fun!

In my seven decades of life, I have sometimes exercised a lot, sometimes less, and recently, (now dogless, so lacking any canine friend I always called my personal trainer), I have had trouble making a habit of exercise. I am, with Supernatural, exercising 30 to 40 minutes every day, with noticeable results. I have to pace myself so that I don’t overdo my workouts and hurt myself. Supernatural is fun! The Supernatural Facebook page has ample evidence that it has changed many lives for the better.

What does it mean for you?

Virtual Reality (VR) has been touted as useful for training and now I get it. The view from inside the goggles is not perfect, but it is remarkably good; most noticeably it tracks my movement adjusting the scene flawlessly. It is so good that when I tried a roller coaster ride app, I noped out of that very quickly. Also, the hand controllers allow for various interactions with the virtual reality, including grasping and using objects.  

The Virtual Reality Society provides a list of applications in various areas. In their business category, they list virtual tours of a business environment, training, and a 360 view of a product. VR gaming is very popular, including opportunities to interact with others.  “The best VR apps of 2021” at digitaltrends includes apps allowing the user to create spray graffiti, to watch 360 videos, and to explore 12 underwater environments, This example at Lenovo reports on the use of VR to restore memories for dementia patients

My three stages of emotion in Supernatural reinforce my belief that scoring systems designed supposedly to motive people actually undermine intrinsic motivation and thus long term behavioral change. As a professor, I told students that grades undermine learning.  Alfie Kohn has written great books on motivation, especially in the field of education.  I recently learned of a quote from Barry Schwartz (a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College, my alma mater): “when you rely on incentives, you undermine values.”

Where can you learn more?

The tag line on the TV improvisational comedy show “Whose Line is it Anyway” is “where everything is made up and the points don’t matter.” Or on video here. 

I read the Barry Schwartz quote in a recent report from the NAACP: “Fossil Fueled Foolery. An Illustrated Primer on the Fossil Fuel Industry’s Deceptive Tactics.” The second edition, issued on 1 April this year, is anything but an April Fool’s joke and I highly recommend it.

Alfie Kohn’s website describes his books; my favorites are Punished by Rewards and No Contest. In his latest blog post (8 March 2021) he quotes one of my heroes, John Dewey, on the bad effects of sugar-coating. Kohn remarks: “These days an awful lot of such sugarcoating is done digitally — for example, with apps that add points and levels to `gamify’ a list of decontexualized facts or skills that students are required to master.”

Virtual reality involves immersion in the computer generated environment. In augmented reality, additional information is displayed on top of person’s real view. The Oculus Quest 2 has a pass through feature for augmented reality, used, for example, to set up the safety space. Wired has a good introduction to VR with explanation of some terms also.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Source: Wikimedia Commons. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

What’s new?

Since 23 March, a quarter-mile-long container ship, the Ever Given, has been stuck across the Suez Canal blocking all traffic in both directions.

What does it mean?

While news reports about this situation are mostly focusing on the efforts to move the ship and on the possible consequences for world shipping (do we need another reminder of the risks of long supply chains?), potential causes that have been mentioned include strong winds and a loss of steering power on the ship. Another report said that mechanical or engine failure had been ruled out and that the ship had been involved in an accident involving high winds in Germany in 2019.

What does it mean for you?

In Fall 2006, I was teaching, as I did each fall, an introduction to industrial engineering course at Colorado State University-Pueblo. My goal in that course was to help students get the big picture of industrial engineering, including that industrial engineers tend to blame the system, not the individual person, when mistakes and accidents occur. I told the class that initial reports of accidents often cite operator error as the cause, but that later reports often uncover deeper, systemic causes.

The next week, tragically, in Lexington KY,  a small jet took the wrong runway for takeoff, overran the too short runway and all but one of the 50 people aboard died; in an early news article, the cause was cited as operator error by the pilot for taking the wrong runway. As the class and I watched the evolving story over the semester, it emerged that the airport was undergoing construction and runway entrances had changed the week before; that, contrary to FAA guidance, only one controller was in the tower and he had turned to perform administrative tasks; that, again contrary to FAA guidance, the controller had been given multiple responsibilities; that small commuter planes were not required, as larger jets were, to have an onboard system that checks for the correct runway; and that other factors may have contributed to the crash. While it is clear that the pilot and copilot missed cues that they were on the wrong runway and engaged in irrelevant conversation while taxiing, the FAA took several actions as a result of the crash to improve the systems for ensuring use of the correct runway.

In writing this blog post, I found a 2019 analysis of the crash that stated that some of the lights on the correct runway were not working and that Comair practice did not include comparing the “heading bug” and the actual heading on the display.  That article stated: “Because it’s impossible to expect a pilot to never make a mistake, redundant systems exist to ensure that mistakes are caught and corrected quickly.” That article also states: “The nuance of the situation unfortunately was lost on many. The media largely blamed the pilots without recognizing that mistakes are never made in a vacuum.”

Tools exist to analyze systems for risks before accidents occur and to analyze causes after accidents. For example, my local Boys & Girls Clubs (I sit on their Board) recently instituted procedures for recording and analyzing mistakes that might have resulted in an issue concerning safety of club members, whether or not something bad happened. Kid safety is a strong priority of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

In my experience as an engineer, good engineers are obsessed with preventing mistakes and accidents, in a strangely matter-of-fact way. On a visit to a manufacturing plant years ago, my small group had gotten a thorough safety briefing and were outfitted in hard hats, safety glasses, steel toed shoes, orange vests, and more. As we left the briefing room to start the tour, we descended an external staircase. The engineer leading our group turned around to make sure that each of us was using the handrail on the stairs. I smiled.

“About 12% of world trade by volume“ goes through the Suez Canal. This episode has resulted in no loss of life or pollution, but the design of a system to keep the Canal open is vital not just to Egypt but to the world. An article by Captain George Livingstone calls attention to the systemic issues created by the ever increasing size of container ships.

Every accident or near miss should be analyzed and systemic improvements should be generated and considered to prevent future occurrences. Another industrial engineering principle is that workers work in the system; managers work on the system.

Where can you learn more?

Techniques for analyzing risk and discovering the root cause of errors include: FMEA,  mistake proofing, and the 5 Whys. The 2015 version of ISO 9000 certification focuses to a great extent on risk management.  

The fascinating book The Box by Marc Levinson describes the development of the shipping container and the changes that were required to the entire shipping system.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.