Survival Engineering: Computer Engineering
Yuka Hayashi Rob Oudendijk
Have you ever heard the term "Survival Engineering1"? “Survival Engineering” is a new term to describe engineering works done with limited resources. To make the term “Survival Engineering” more clear, let's start from a daily example!
1 “Survival Engineering” was named by Yasutomo Baba in 2012 and the idea has being developed by Rob Oudendijk and Yuka Hayashi.
Imagine that you are invited to live in an abandoned elementary school in Aizu area (Northern part of Japan) for a year, from August. The school locates in a very isolated town, like‌, 30 min bicycle ride brings you to a supermarket or the train station. Don't think that you are going to refuse the invitation, but you accept the offer. You have only a bicycle and walking as transportation means. You are very busy and do not have enough time for enjoying bicycle ride to downtown everyday. So, what do you think would be an inconvenient thing to live in the school?
We had an experience to live in an abandoned school in Aizu area for a year, and what we found the most inconvenient thing was that the school did not have a bath or a shower room. So what would you do if you were in the situation? You are very busy and you have a small budget about 5,000 yen. You can use any equipment of the school, but there is no water heater... We were very busy at that time, so as a quick solution, we made a shower room in a cooking class room.
We could use big pans and stoves from the school. We put water in the pan and made it warm. In the beginning, we were bathing this way. But, it was inconvenient without a showerhead. We bought a showerhead, a water pump which is normally used for a washing machine to get water from a bath, a switch, a cable, and a tubing. We connected them and‌,
to keep the pump under water‌,
we used bricks which we found in the school.
So, when you need to find a solution, flexible way of thinking is important.
Also you have to know what kinds of resources are available, and you need a creative and realistic response ability to problems. Making shower at the cooking class room was a simple, quick solution, and using it was quite fun, but we knew that we had to make improved version against cold before it started freezing‌ So, we had to come up with a place with easy water access and better isolation, and a way to heat up water, with limited budget.
Deciding a place for the improved version was not so hard.
We thought modifying a toilet booth was the easiest way. There were no simple water heaters available within our budget. There were simple electric showerheads for camping, but they were designed for warmer climates. In Japan, electric showerheads are not popular. So, we researched the availability in America.
Finally, we found a reasonable electric showerhead, but the heating coil power of electric showerhead was 3kw. It would not be enough powerful to heat water for shower in cold environment. So, we bought two of them and modified the head to host two coils in the same space. We installed a modified showerhead in the toilet booth and isolated the booth with XPS, insulation material. The modified showerhead uses 60 ampere, although there were only 20 ampere breakers. How would you use the showerhead? What we did was using three breakers in parallel! But please be careful. To do this, you need risk assessment and management capability.
Showerheads are not relating to our profession, but being aware of anything can make you powerful. Because of the tight budget, it was very difficult to find a good enough showerhead. Consuming time without finding good one is hard…, nearly want to give up…, but cannot increase budget, you need good economic sense, If we don't find it, we have to use a cold shower room in the cooking class room…, this becomes motivation. The project should be completed before freezing starts. You have to be aware of timing. Of course, shower room is for people to use. When you think up the solution, you have to consider how people use shower. So, those were the survival engineering skills which we used for shower room project. And, that was an example of survival engineering for daily use.
Are you getting familiar with the term "survival engineering"?
Now, let’s see an example of software project done with survival engineering skills! This project was done when the Internet access was quite restricted in the Netherlands Embassy. The Netherlands Embassy requested Rob to create custom software from scratch, which would track projects progress, resources, time, and so on, with a database function of contact information and projects. The Embassy was planning to assign 1 person for inputting all projects relating information for one department. For example, 8 people come to a person and say‌, this is what I did, they are who I met, here are the business cards, it keeps going like this way every day!
Do you think it is efficient? Rob thought that their plan would make heavy workload for one person and assumed that Embassy would not be happy with the project in the end. That is why, Rob suggested to the Embassy, “in stead of 1 person inputting all data for one department, everybody input their project progress etc. by themselves and everybody can access to information,� as an alternative solution.
Another point of the requirement from the Embassy was creating custom software from scratch. But, their budget was limited‌ How can you reduce the cost for the project? To reduce the cost, you can modify existing software. This way, they wouldn't consume time and money for staff to learn new software too much. So, another suggestion which Rob made was modifying Outlook, because the Embassy staff were using that software the most.
After Rob did more research and assessment of the feasibility, with getting feedback from some staff, the Embassy agreed to proceed the project with modifying Outlook.
In order to modify Outlook, knowledge of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and Visual Basic (VB) scripting is necessary. Rob did not have the knowledge at that time, but he studied them and applied to the project.
At that time, the Embassy staff had 100Mb each for their outlook data storage. So, if the project and task management data with word documents or some other documents, and contact information were added, you can imagine that the data would reach the limit of local storage quickly. How would you solve this issue? Considering time and budget of the project, Rob decided to extract the data of the messages and attached files from Outlook and store them on a FTP server.
So, the URLs which pointed to the data on FTP server were stored in the messages of Outlook.
Finally, with this software, staff could complete the work with a few clicks and writing short remarks. When they entered information, it was linked to the contact information of involved parties automatically. Rob completed the project and the Embassy was satisfied with his work. To lead the project success Rob were making improvements each time after getting feedback from end users continuously, considering end users and being flexible and resourceful. These were the survival engineering skills which Rob used for this project.
Now, let’s see an example of hardware project done with survival engineering skills! Regarding this project, nobody asked Rob to do some work. Rob was working for a small video postproduction company in Tokyo, called Birdland.
Birdland was using Sony SMC3000G video professional computer, to create subtitles for NHK documentaries. However, it took long time for the computer to render. That was very annoying for Birdland. There were faster computers in the market, but Birdland did not have enough budget to replace it.
Voluntary, Rob started to research the possibilities to speedup the rendering process. What Rob found after his research was the power of the computer and the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) were relating to the rendering speed.
Rob replaced the CPU with the one available only in the United States and modified BIOS. This way, he could make the rendering speed six times faster. Birdland enjoyed the computer's improvement. They asked Sony if Sony wanted to buy the speedup kit from BirdLand or not. Sony didn't say that they wanted to buy, but Sony gave a list of their clients to Birdland. In the end, Birdland sold about 250 kits, and after all, Sony, Sony's clients and Birdland were pleased.
Regarding this project, in order to lead the project success, Rob was solving problems flexible with his creativity, analyzing problems well, and assessing and managing potential risks. Additionally, ability of Birdland to see the market potential also contributed to the project. These were the survival engineering skills used for this project.
Are you getting interested in acquiring survival engineering skills? Then, let’s do it!
How can you comprehend software and hardware engineering, and know software and hardware? By studying! How about knowledge of new technologies, tools and materials? By being aware of your surroundings. Always be open for new information! If you think flexibly, your comprehension and knowledge will let you come up with creative and realistic solutions! How about capabilities of research and problem analysis? Depend on your efforts! Be logical, precise and critical. The efforts to be logical and critical also would help you to be aware of potential risks easily. Why do you think that attention and consideration to others are important for computer engineers? Engineers’ logic is not always same as the one of end-users or clients. So, think for others!
In case you are working on a project with other engineers, if you do not communicate with other engineers, what would happen? You might be working on something, which has been already done by others. To prevent this kind of situation, you have to communicate with other engineers. In the process of development, it is important to test if the development performs as it should be or not, at each step. It is easy for engineers to neglect test, but what will happen if you neglect test? It will create more work for engineers in the later stage.
Why sense of time is important? Time relates to budget. Also, if the project could not be completed in the right timing, there might be no more demands in the market. In order to be on the schedule, you should be conscious about what you are working on in detail (micro management) and how much progress has been made in the overall project (macro management). And, don't make an optimistic time schedule... For example, regarding Enterprise-Resource-Planning (ERP) software project, according to a report2 published by Panorama Consulting in 2012, about 60 percent of companies said their projects went beyond schedule. According to our experience, you can say the same thing to hardware project and other software project.
2 The survey released this week by Panorama Consulting, a Denver-area company that provides ERP implementation and software selection services, is based on 2,000 responses from 61 countries, which were collected between February 2006 and May of this year July, 2012
Don't think that all clients have a money-generating machine. Budget can be negotiable but often limited. Work on projects with your pride, not only for your financial purposes. Then you will have motivation to complete projects. You would be ashamed that the project was cancelled halfway through, because the clients found there were no demand in the market. It is not engineer's fault, but how can you handle your pride without completing what you started working on? To prevent it, what can you do? Be interested in the market trends. Be aware if the project is still valuable or not.
So, to acquire survival engineering skills, in a nutshell, it depends on your efforts, aspiration, insight, willingness, honesty, and diligence.
Have you had all these skills of survival engineering already?
If not yet, please make efforts to acquire these skills!