TammyAathome
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Why do we need to communicate well? Remember the O-Ring!
The Lesson of the O-Ring.
When our struggling or bored children ask us during their English grammar/composition lessons--why am I learning this Mom? Why do I have to do this!!!
Tell them this true story:
My homeschooled son, husband and I, went to the High School Engineering Banquet sponsored by the Engineering organizations in the area this last Wednesday (February 20th). The whole point of this annual banquet is to inspire high school students to become the next generation of engineers.
We were assigned to a wonderful older gentleman as our banquet host, a Marshall Smith, who had spent 45 years at Boeing and LOVED to tell us his engineering stories.
He had for a number of years been the director of Boeing's stress division (His division put planes and plane parts through stress tests to see if/where they would fail...then obviously figured out how to correct whatever problem so planes don't fall out of the sky and kill people).
Because of his position, Mr. Smith was invited to the investigative meeting about the failed O-rings which had caused the space shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986.
If you remember, the Challenger exploded shortly after blast off killing the whole crew. This flight had already become famous because Christa McAuliff, the first teacher in space, was aboard. For further information on the Challenger disaster, go to http://space.about.com/cs/challenger/a/challenger.htm
Mr Smith relayed what was done and said at this investigative meeting.
One of the head guys (from Boeing's areospace division, I believe Mr. Smith said) walked up to the podium holding an O-ring in his hand. At the podium, he also put another O-ring into a glass of iced water.
This man then began a benign beginning to his speech which lasted about 20 minutes. He talked about O-rings, and he showed how the O-ring he was holding was flexible and pliant. He then suddenly stopped, picked up the glass of iced water with the chilled O-ring in it, pulled out the O-ring, which had become very cold, at least 32 degrees, and quickly snapped it in two.
Gentlemen, he said, the O-rings failed because of temperature...the blast off was conducted at 29 degrees temperature and I have just shown you the O-rings fail at 32.
Why didn't anyone know this until after the fact!!!! After lives were lost????
Our host Mr. Smith went on to explain the O-ring manufacturing company did know, and had warned NASA before the launch.
But why did NASA ignore this warning!!!!
Because the O-ring engineers who had discovered this failure had written their report so badly, supporting their conclusion so vaguely, that NASA could not figure out what point they were trying to make.
Thus NASA continued the launch simply because of poor communication skills. These were brilliant engineers who had designed an intricate part for an intricate system, but they failed to use good communication skills.
Skills that could have saved lives.
So why do we need to communicate well? Remember the O-Ring.
"Now you know the rest of the story,"
TammyA
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2/22/2008, 11:36 am
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