Recent lift failure incident in Pune (and Quality issues in software/hardware systems)
Baselinemag is a good site for project management related community. The article from Baseline Magazine Why Software Quality Matters gives some actual cases where software quailty problem led to lives getting lost.
Considering that a lift failed in one of the societies in Pune (see Indian Express article here) and ended up killing a person, the incident ought to have been discussed in technical circles, and a strong quality demand should have been raised by the public. But nothing like that happened except for some journalistic rumblings in that area.
I was recently talking to an engineer who attends to our lift, to get details of how it failed (that lift was of different company). He said the its design was not known to be good one. For example, all sensors need to be in series circuit, and should have high DC voltage to make sure that fuse trips in case of any sensor failure. (It seems OTIS uses 33 volts - and this is better than industry standard.)
He also added that any such fuse tripping results in no electricity to Motor, and so the lift gets suspended wherever it is. He said that this was much better approach than, say, bringing the lift to nearest floor. I was convinced. This guy (98-99 BE Mech from Satara) was indeed of that "quality mindset" - not just theory or "I am doing my job" approach.
-Vinod
Considering that a lift failed in one of the societies in Pune (see Indian Express article here) and ended up killing a person, the incident ought to have been discussed in technical circles, and a strong quality demand should have been raised by the public. But nothing like that happened except for some journalistic rumblings in that area.
I was recently talking to an engineer who attends to our lift, to get details of how it failed (that lift was of different company). He said the its design was not known to be good one. For example, all sensors need to be in series circuit, and should have high DC voltage to make sure that fuse trips in case of any sensor failure. (It seems OTIS uses 33 volts - and this is better than industry standard.)
He also added that any such fuse tripping results in no electricity to Motor, and so the lift gets suspended wherever it is. He said that this was much better approach than, say, bringing the lift to nearest floor. I was convinced. This guy (98-99 BE Mech from Satara) was indeed of that "quality mindset" - not just theory or "I am doing my job" approach.
-Vinod
posted by Vinod Kulkarni at
6:27 PM
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