Andrew+M+03

It’s surprising to think that better visuals of life threatening data could have saved the lives of those on the Challenger mission. It’s also important to recognize that the information presented by the engineers was compiled by people who are extremely specialized in their field. This is to say, that any opportunity for the engineers to gain knowledge was most likely spent on the subject of engineering. Specialization is an ever-growing phenomenon in our technologically advanced society, which is vital to our continued advancement and manufacturing capabilities. In the time of da Vinci, a person could be a scientist and an artist; however, it now takes so long for specialized people to acquire their knowledge that they do not have time to diversify their subject matter. Of those engineers, some probably specialized in material science, of those a few specialized in metallurgy and then even of those some probably focused on particular metals and then of those some were specialized on the effects of heat, stress, conductibility or other properties of metal.

The specialization of modern society has dramatic positive and negative outcomes. The ability to focus our collective human knowledge as a collective of intelligent individuals lets us solve extremely complex problems, like launching rockets into space. However, specialization produces an individual who is so committed and focused on one very specific area of expertise that other areas of knowledge are disregarded, even the ability to communicate effectively. This does pose the question of why Thiokol did not have specialized personal who’s task it would have been to communicate between their technical personal and the outside world.

A company I worked for a few years ago, North American BioIndustries, had a problem with specialization; they had several departments with people who were very good at doing their specific jobs but could not communicate effectively between departments. The company created their own chemical formulas through their chemists, had a sales department to sell directly to customers and also manufactured the product themselves. Each department also had more departments under it and because of the lack of communication many projects were delayed simply because the company did not know the status of a project. It was amazing to see people constantly saying that they passed the purchase orders on to someone else, which may or may not have been the correct person.

I was given the task of making a flow chart of how a product comes to be, how it is formulated, tested, sold, manufactured, shipped, billed and everything in between. I produced a one-foot tall by three feet long, color coded, flow chart of every department sometimes including specific job positions and arranged them in the order a project should follow. I did not institute any standards or rules; I just asked people where a project came from and who they pasted it on to; this laid it all out for them to understand how everyone is connected. It was a crude PowerPoint flowchart but they could finally see the process and realize that no one department was the center of the company. They even printed out several copies, framed them and hung them in the halls; the company eventually went out of business regardless.

The Challenger disaster and my job experience has shown me how highly intelligent people can be so focused in their particular field that common sense or the ability to communicate can be degraded and ignored while striving to be the best in one particular area.