Is carelessness the new norm?

Information technology (IT) has been a great enabler in nearly every area of life and business. Mechatronic packaging machines, enabled by IT, are far more capable, flexible, and affordable than their non-IT enabled counterparts. Our ability to communicate with one another has expanded in unbelievable ways. The benefits that IT has brought to our lives can't be fully enumerated. But while enjoying the benefits, we've also picked up some bad habits, one of which is carelessness in design and execution.

I just purchased and installed a new external DVD drive on my netbook. The first thing that occurred when the installation was complete was that eleven firmware updates were downloaded; that's right, 11! In my opinion, this product wasn't ready to be sitting on retail shelves. But it reminded me of experiences years ago when we would receive packaging lines shipped from Europe that didn't include completed software. Computer technology has made it too easy to ship incomplete, untested or buggy systems with the idea that the job can be finished later.

Anyone who has designed a major relay control panel and sent it to the panel shop appreciates the importance of not being careless or incomplete with the design. I used to be called upon to troubleshoot and modify a control panel containing 600 relays and 167 analog trim pots. The logic of this system was soldered in place, and the parameters physically adjusted. Neither could be changed with a laptop. It was incumbent upon the designer of that system to get it right, or nearly so, the first time because changes would be very difficult and costly. For the same reasons, thorough analysis was necessary before modifications were made because they weren't easily reversed by loading in an old file. Carelessness was punishable by firing.

Today, too many designers accept careless or incomplete design as a way of doing business. Appparently product managers do too, or they wouldn't allow a consumer product to be shipped that needed 11 revisions before it is used for the first time. It is one thing to be able to shortcut the manufacturing cycle by building and wiring the control system before all the software is completed, but it is quite another to ship a machine to a customer before the software is done and tested, with the hope that it will be finished for startup.

Our young people are growing up in this world where carelessness may be becoming the new normal and were fundamentals are too often brushed aside. To help counter this, I have some recommendations that many may find old-fashioned. Students should learn their addition and multiplication tables before using a calculator. They should learn to spell and to diagram a sentence before using a word processor. They should learn to hand-write a decent letter before sending texts with emoticons. And they should learn to build a relay logic circuit before learning to program a PLC.

With fundamentals solidly in hand, both students and our business leaders should learn that it's not ok to pretend the job is finished, if it's not, just because our internet-connected IT culture makes it easy to try to patch things up later. Hopefully our packaging machinery industry hasn't fallen into this trap. What has been your experience?

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Comments Keith, You are dead on. The society is so scattered that the attention span has become limited. People are multitasking everywhere and as a result mistakes happen all the time. Too many gadgets to save time which actually take up more time and attention. Posted by: Ranjit de Silva on September 30, 2010 I liked your article but you need to perform a spell check. Posted by: Claude Benson on September 30, 2010 I completely agree! Posted by: Cesar on September 30, 2010 I've exactly the same and not less experience than you. But it's due to our own fault of educating the younger generation this way, and tolerating them to this extent. I started finding more errors of assembly in my vacuum sealing machine from US supplier in current 5 years: incomplete functional tests and incomplete assembly, some are even seenable that didn't need expert to spot out. Another example is typo errors in brochures from English-speaking countries, even University brochures from UK. What worst is that nobody is taught TODAY to give apology to error made, because priority is given only to rectification and meeting deadline. Posted by: Bill Ng on October 5, 2010 Yes, I agree. It has always been accepted that some errors or fine tuning will need to be done, but this seems to have become an excuse to relax the level of checks done. Most of my experience relates to PLC programming - I've not performed much programming myself but have experience with producing and documenting the logic. It's always proved less time efficient to sort out issues on site as there are many other factors to consider at that time plus it is a more stressful environment. This is where an experienced field programmer proves their value - but they are really not that many out there, and cost is always a factor. Documentation of program code also seems to less common these days. We used to produce Sequential Function Charts, Binary Logic Diagrams and Analogue Controller diagram to document the logic in a concise fashion. Admittedly this would still need to be converted to ladder logic by the programmer but at least the logic was well considered early on (plus the logic documentation made fault finding and modifications much easier down the track - reverse engineering ladder logic is a nightmare without it). These days we only produce a Functional Specification and it is not easy to describe the details of the interlocks - a binary diagram is much better at showing these and removes ambiguity in interpretation. Sadly those in control of the projects didn't always understand the logic diagrams and preferred to leave it at the Functional Spec, and only at a broad level too. We seem to think that we are too smart for the basics these days. Posted by: Hall Ways on November 11, 2010 Post a comment (If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.) Name: Email Address: URL: Remember personal info? Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style) Type the word 'packaging' (required):