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To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design
by Henry PetroskiSummary & Review
February 9, 2004 Luke Wissmann 2
To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design
Executive Summary
• Author sets out to define engineering• Secondary goal is to show the challenges
– Design inadequacies-miscalculations– Manufacturing variability– Material performance variability– Unknowns
• Illustrates the difficulties of engineering through stories– Mental model development of adolescents– Bridges, buildings, aircrafts, and ship failures
February 9, 2004 Luke Wissmann 3
To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design
Review
• Good book for a layman that wants to understand why seemingly “stupid” design get built
• Good book to help the technically minded engineers simplify the difficulties of engineering design
• Superbly written with interesting examples
February 9, 2004 Luke Wissmann 4
To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design
Engineering and Failure
• “… this book is my answer to the questions ‘What is engineering?’ and ‘What do engineers do?’”
• Failure is central to understanding engineering—Engineering design is about identifying and eliminating failure modes
• “Pursuit of Innovation” causes failure– Human tastes, resources, and ambitions
February 9, 2004 Luke Wissmann 5
To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design
Children and Toys
“No child articulates it, but everyone learns that toys are mean. They teach us not the vocabulary by the reality of structural failure and product liability.”
“We learn that not everything can be fixed.”
February 9, 2004 Luke Wissmann 6
To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design
Hypothesis
“Theories entered into the scientific cooking contest are known as hypotheses, and the process of judging is known as the testing of hypotheses.”
“The process of engineering design may be considered a succession of hypotheses that such and such an arrangement of parts will perform a desired function without fail….if it is used as intended”
February 9, 2004 Luke Wissmann 7
To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design
Success is Foreseeing Failure
“Pre-rational age of structural design”
reliance on physical experiment and mid-construction correction
February 9, 2004 Luke Wissmann 8
To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design
Design and Planning a Vacation
• One can improve the success of a vacation by anticipating what can go wrong
• The more radical the plan, the more anticipating must be done
Only one design can be built, just like only one route must be chosen for a trip
February 9, 2004 Luke Wissmann 9
To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design
Revision“The work of the engineer is not unlike that of the writer.
How the original design for a new bridge comes to be may involve as great a leap of the imagination as the first draft of a novel. The designer may already have
rejected many alternatives, perhaps because he could see immediately upon their conception that they would
not work for this or that reason. Thus he could see immediately that his work would fail. What the engineer eventually puts down on paper may even have some obvious flaws, but none that he believes could not be
worked out in time.”
February 9, 2004 Luke Wissmann 10
To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design
“The paradox of engineering design is that successful structural concepts devolve into
failures, while the colossal failures contribute to the evolution of innovative and inspiring structures. However, when we understand
the principle objective of the design process as obviating failure, the paradox is solved.”
February 9, 2004 Luke Wissmann 11
To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design
Two Favorite Quotes:
“We could virtually end all risk of failure by simply declaring a moratorium on
innovation, change, and progress.”
“The computer is both a blessing and curse for it makes possible calculations once
beyond the reach of human endurance while at the same time also making them virtually
beyond the hope of human verification.”
