Earthquakes and coalescence

Continuing with my personal ranking of the most innovative aeronautic designers, today we reach number 9 on the list. After my own criterion, this place shall go to the Horten brothers, Walter (1913 – 1998) and Reimar (1915 – 1993) for their development of the first operative flying wings. Along with a lot of gliders, they designed the HO-229, the first flying wing powered by two turbojet engines that was fully operative and was very close to Göring’s dream of a 1000x1000x1000 aircraft (1000 kg of payload, 1000 km range and 1000 km/h). The Horten brothers were also pioneers in stealth coating with the purpose of minimizing the radar footprint.

Therefore, position 9 in my ranking goes to the Horten Bros.

Continuing our thoughts of the last entry, the answer to that open question requires a scientific approach. The big companies we were talking about are profitable and keep a high technologic level due to the fact that the amount of stupid people in an organization, if you consider the organization as a big sample of people, is a non measurable fraction, but still finite of it. Besides, if you take into account the second law by Carlo M. Cipolla (The Fundamental Laws of Human Stupidity) :

The probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

This means in our specific situation, that stupid people are spread along the organization in an equiprobable distribution, no matter if you are the CEO, Area director, head of a department, engineer, technician, guard or the housecleaner. Assuming this as our starting hypothesis, let’s imagine a company being like an enormous drinking-glass filled with a very viscous liquid (the organization) where two different kinds of particles are in suspension (the stupid and the non-stupid people).

Although Cipolla’s analysis is very exhaustive, he was an economist and I believe that he did not consider a fundamental aspect that we, from a technical point of view, are able to focus in a different way. The approach that I am considering is that the above mentioned two kinds of particles have different physical properties.

In resting conditions the non-stupid people (who, from here forth, shall be called beta particles) show a tendency to keep equilibrium with the exception of small Brownian movements in the suspension liquid. On the other hand, the stupid people (called from here forth omega particles) show a big tendency, probably caused by a weak interacting force, to stratify in different glass’ levels. This leads to the fact that the beta particles cannot keep relating to each other and this together with their low molecular weight, keeps them isolated and inert.

But if there is an earthquake (assuming that the glass does not break) and the glass is shacken, everything changes considerably in it. Omega particles break their bonds quickly and turn almost invisible, while the beta particles start an aggregation process and create important nuclei following a coalescence model. This phenomenon don´t occurs spontaneously. Usually a starting point is needed and acts as a catalyst. This starter or catalyst is a beta particle that, due to an alchemical strange behavior, transmutes into what we will call an alpha particle that is in fact the catalyst itself. After this point the coalescence is unstoppable. The alpha particle irradiates a clearly identifiable energy detectable in the complete spectrum and acts, as I mentioned before, as an agglutinative agent for the beta particles.

Amazing!

For sure you would like to ask me now how this is related to what we were discussing. Listen, the simile is very appropriate.

In a big company there are very brilliant people who cohabitate with others that aren’t that clever. But, taking into account the previous analogy, omega individuals, although they’re a lot but not a majority, are able to stratify and embed themselves into the system and are responsible for the timetables, the objectives and to cap it all, they control the budgets.

In a big company an earthquake is the synonym of a program that is tumbling down. After wasting three years with aimless omega individuals, multitudinous meetings, telecoms, and over fourteen unreal plannings, the situation gets worse. The management decides to take radical measures and the beta-particle coalescences phenomenon starts and the omega particles become invisible. But the starting of this process has to be leaded by an individual that assumes the role of an alpha particle.

These people are members of the organization, usually very good engineers and head of any intermediate company’s area. When they are proposed for an alpha position, the management knows that if this goes wrong, these people are expendable and perfectly adequate candidates to be guilty. This is commonly known as scapegoat.

These people, who start with everything against them, are capable to bring together the most spirited, lively and valuable people of different company areas. People who, as I told you in the first entry, are genuine “Dirt Nails”, who are decided to assume an enormous risk just to show that they are capable to do it.

There aren’t many of these people, but believe me when I tell you that there are at least some. And I can promise you that it is an absolute personal pleasure when you can work hand by hand with them.

In another moment I will go deeper in what kind of people I mean, I will explain their personal characteristics, how they manage that certain groups which were created in a critical situation, remain alive once the crisis is resolved and, what is more important, how you can distinguish them in your company and  try to  join their crazy team.

That being said, the first conclusion is that a big company does not know how to manage dynamic knowledge, understanding this as the capacity to solve design issues in a fast and creative way and at the same time prepare the future products. On the other hand, they’re very efficient managing static knowledge, a knowledge that is based in the settling of acquired expertise and that can be captured into procedures and formal norms. This kind of knowledge is essential for the production phase of a product.

Let me give you an example. A big aerospace company is able to produce a passenger airlifter with 200+ seats on a daily basis. And this, my friends is, from any point of view, something that deserves my deepest respect.

Below you can find the link to the solution for last weeks challenge. Some reader did a interesting approach to it that we did not consider at the time we solved it. The main problem is that with the maximum available test time it would not have been possible.

http://engineers-corner.dip-solutions.com/Answer_1.pdf

In the next link you will find this week's challenge. It is an odd electronics problem, but for the solution you only can use logic gates (TTL or CMOS). No microprocessors are allowed.

http://engineers-corner.dip-solutions.com/Problem_2.pdf

A thought:

People saying “it cannot be done” should not interrupt other that are doing it.

See you

Be brave

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