Solving Problems
Much of this section will concern the kind of work that I did in my job as an engineer, so it might not be applicable to other types of work, at least not directly.
Think through problems. The solution may be found logically. I have found that engineers are too quickly driven to solve problems by trying experiments, this vs that, trying parallel approaches, or what we call split experiments. I think
that some problems can be solved just by looking at the data and thinking through what the cause might be. So before launching a time consuming, expensive design of experiments approach, spend some time thinking about what the observed results are.
This may be best done in collaboration with others and kicking about ideas. It is often worth the effort.
Be data driven. Don’t guess or over extrapolate from a small database. Get enough data so you are sure
that the results are correct and representative of the whole. This is especially important when you are thinking through a problem. Look at the data, the answer may be in there.
If you don’t measure it you can’t
fix it. How can you know the size of the problem, the extent of the problem if you are not measuring the result? Graph the data. Are the results changing over time? Is there a correlation to some input to the process that you
have not expected? Sometimes just measuring and graphing the data fixes the problem – scary but true. I have seen this exemplified when there is a complex process with many variable inputs, where graphing and posting the results makes
the result improve. In an offshore assembly plant that was building cell phones the manufacturing yield, or the percentage of phones that worked correctly at the end of the line was below expectations. The management started to post the daily
yield results in the employee entrance to the facility, and over the next several weeks the yield got better, and in a month it was over 99%. Management claimed that they did nothing else. But you can bet that the operators saw the result and improved
the way they were doing their work.
Root cause analysis – find the root cause, the fix is usually easy. There are books and classes on root cause analysis. Briefly, the root cause is the basic reason something is
not working as it should. For example, your car is not running well. You or your mechanic look at the three things that engines need to run: gas, air and spark. You begin to check each, and find that the sparkplugs are fouled. That
is not the root cause. Why are they fouled/ could be bad gas, or bad spark. Let’s say that the gas in the tank is new Shell gas so that probably isn’t the problem. So you test the spark plug voltage and find that it is weak.
Why? Maybe the sparkplug wires are getting old and the insolation is breaking down. You check this (an easy way is to look at the engine in the dark and you can see signs of arcing off the wires.) You have found the root cause. The
fix is easy; get new wires. (To be precisely accurate, determining the real root cause would involve determining why the insolation broke down, what material defect was involved and what caused it to fail. But for our purposes, getting the car
to run, replacing the wires is good enough.)
Sleep on the questions. The answer may come to you in your sleep. This is a weird one. I have often been dealing with a problem that I can’t figure out what might be
wrong. I can think about it before going to bed and in the morning I have, if not the answer, at least a fresh approach to finding it. I think I first experienced this when I was a young engineer, I designed a transistor ignition system for my
Corvette. I built it, tested it on the bench, it worked perfectly, but when I installed it on the car it didn’t work. Not at all. No go. I couldn’t figure out why, and went to bed very frustrated and disappointed.
In the night, somehow I realized that I had not connected the primary of the coil correctly. Next morning redid the connection, and Success! Very exciting. I have had many other instances of this little genie coming in my sleep with
the answer. Most of them involve my work so I will not detail them here as company private information may be involved, but there is one other recent instance. I had to get a new iPhone. I had to bring it to life from scratch as I was not
able to transfer any of my contacts, calendar or other information from my old work phone. But I have windows contact and calendar on my home PC. How to get the windows office files to the phone? Note, I am not an Apple guy and always had
an IT Department to do this for me. I tried copy / paste, and other what seemed to be logical ways to no avail. I slept on it and in the morning I knew the way to do it was to use the cloud feature on my PC and Apple. Worked like a charm.
So the bottom line here is problems sometimes seem to solve themselves, or the solution will come to you if you give it a chance.
Sleep on difficult decisions. This is the same thing as sleeping on questions. What may seem
to be a difficult decision in the evening may be obvious in the morning.
The things you most worry about may never come to pass. This is pretty obvious. It applies to personal life as well as to work issues.
So try to relax, chill out and don’t over think unlikely events.