To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design (Vintage) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

To his credit, Mr. Petroski's writing style is approachable by non-engineers, a feat that is probably worth at least one star all by itself. But it is a shortcoming that considerable detail has been sacrificed, perhaps in an effort to make the text palatable to a non-technical audience. The resulting text glosses over mechanical reasons for the design flaws under consideration. In some instances, such details are probably not all that important. To be fair, lengthy technical explanations about collapsed bridges, broken ships or fractured colums might render this book even less marketable than it is (at present, it hovers below 14,000th on Amazon's sales ranking). In those cases, the omission simply makes the account less satisifying to the overly curious reader.

But that is not always the case, and some examples would have benefitted from more detailed explanations for two reasons. First, since the book is about learning from mistakes, it would have been valuable to understand the mistake itself. That knowledge would help the reader appreciate how subsequent engineers evaluated a problem, identifed its cause and avoided repeating the mistake in analogous situations. Second, and more troubling, some omissions are confusing. For instance, the Challenger disaster is compared to the aforementioned Greek column problem.... In the former, a third O-ring had been added to the shuttle engine, in the latter a third brace used to hold up the columns, and Mr. Petroski offers this as a "red flag" that should have alerted NASA engineers to the need to reevaluate the whole system. I'm no engineer, but my understanding of what caused the failure of the shuttle's third O-ring is different in kind from the problem associated with third brace used in the storage of marble columns.

On balance, however, these are not fatal flaws. Mr. Petroski's book is worth reading by anyone who rides an elevator, works in a skyscraper or drives across a bridge. And his central point -- that system modifications justify a reevaluation of the entire system for unintended design problems -- is one that should be taken to heart by engineers and non-engineers alike. Lesen Sie weiter... ›

I agree with previously posted reviews here that this work is repetative and covers engineering failures at a very high level. However, I believe that this is an important work for those that do any type of complex design or work with designs.

I am not an engineer -- I'm an information systems professional who believes that professionals should be able to review failures, even those of other professions, to better address risk in future projects. The author does a great job of introducing this concept in this book's preface:

"...I believe that an understanding and appreciation of engineers and engineering can be gotten without an engineering or technical education.... I believe that the concept of failure - mechanical and structural failure in the context of this discussion - is central to unerstanding engineering, for engineering design has as its first and foremost objective the obviation of failure. Thus the colossal disasters that do occur are ultimately failures of design, but the lessons learned form those disasters can do more to advance engineering knowledge than all the successful machines and structures in the world."

Take the word engineering out of the above quote and insert any profession there and the quote still works.

I found particularly erie the background on the Comet, the first commercial jet aircraft. In the the chapter on Forensic Engineering, Petroski tells of a early Nevil Shute novel, _No Highway_, in which Shute tells a very, very similar _fictional_ story about a failed commercail aircraft called the Reindeer. I did not know that Shute was an aero engineer working for de Haviland at the same time as the Comet design.... Shute is best known for his work _On the Beach_.

Of interest to other information systems professions is the chapter entitled From Slide Rull to Computer: Forgetting How It Used to be Done.

The bibliography of 11 pages may also be of interest to anyone researching this subject.

This Petroski work is a good introduction in to his other works, as well as the topic of failure analysis....especially if you aren't an engineer. Lesen Sie weiter... ›