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Greetings, As we prepare for the holiday season and the start of 2010, on behalf of all of us at Viewpoint Systems, I would like to wish you all a happy holiday and splendid new year. We recently attended a seminar, presented by assistant professor Marcos Esterman of the Industrial & Systems Engineering Department at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), on integrating data measured during product design, reliability test, and manufacturing test as a means of predicting the costs and causes of warranty returns. As you know, we are passionate about data management in all of its forms and we’ve been in discussion with Dr. Esterman regarding possible collaborative efforts. If you find yourself confronting these types of data management issues and would like to be a part of the conversation we would love to hear from you! This month continues the series on 7 Challenges for Highly Effective Test Engineers with an exploration of Test Engineering Proficiency Thanks for reading!
Jim Campbell |
 Test Engineering Proficiency
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We continue exploring the ‘7 Challenges for Highly Effective Test Engineers’ which are challenges that affect all test engineers developing new test systems or upgrading old ones. Last month, I continued the exploration of these 7 Challenges with a discussion of Development Tools. This month’s Challenge covers Engineering Proficiency. Next month we will look into Resource Limitations. Last month’s Challenge of Development Tools dovetails nicely into this month’s Challenge. Test engineers have an ever-growing toolbox to apply to test system development. Half of this month’s theme is becoming and staying proficient with these tools. The other half is the skills to know when to use these tools. Available hardware and software choices play a critical role, and define your toolset, but which one dominates your toolset selection? I have some strong recommendations, read on to see if you agree. |
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Early Visionary of the Web |
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One of the first attempts to develop a framework to connect information was made by Paul Otlet, an information-science pioneer. Otlet suggested that documents only have meaning once they are interlinked as a “web” of information. Building off of other’s work, he used components of the card catalog system and the decimal classification system and developed a faceted classification system. Although his work was inadequate compared to the “Google’s” of today, many view Otlet’s work as a protoype of the World Wide Web and the hyperlink. Otlet’s work was supported for a brief time and at one point he had a catalog of 15 million index cards and tons of documents. This collection of information sustained a small research business, which would collect a fee for queries. Approximately 1,500 queries a year were handled by mail and telegram. A number of setbacks pushed his work into obscurity and on December 10, 1944 Paul Otlet died. Read more about Otlet’s work. Read more about Otlet's work. |
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