Some issues have been detected when running our Toolsuite applications (Document Loader or Document Publisher), e.g. when running dual monitors, with certain scaling settings etc.
Example of Toolsuite Errors
Sometimes when having more than one monitor connected you may see one of the following error messages.
Solutions
The following solutions can fix the problem without having to remove the monitors.
Scaling
Set the scaling of both monitors to 100%
Restart your machine
Resolution
Set the resolution of both monitors to be the same
Advanced scaling
In Display settings click Advanced scaling settings
Enable Let Windows try to fix apps so they’re not blurry
Restart your machine
High DPI scaling override
Right click on DocPub.exe and choose Properties. Note: if your problem is with Document Loader then just follow the same steps but for DocLoader.exe
In the Compatibility tab select Change high DPI settings
Enable Override high DPI scaling behaviour
Restart your machine
Program DPI
If the above doesn’t work then in the same dialog as High DPI scaling override enable the Use this setting to fix scaling problems…. within the Program DPI section
Optimise for Compatibility
Open Word Options
Select the General tab
In User Interface options ensure the When using multiple displays option is set to Optimize for best appearance
Word Options
Restart your machine
Test Document Publisher/Document Loader and IF you are still getting the error after following all of the above steps then change the option to be Optimise for compatibility and then restart your machine.
Every business requires successful, efficient and utilitarian processes to perform the functions which earn it money. The really simple way to describe this is those businesses which stick to successful processes thrive, whereas those which do not, fail. This is a gross over simplification, of course. However, a fundamental truth lies at the heart of that statement. This article will set out how requirements management tools and Six Steps to Success are the key to unlock successful project delivery.
Get it right at the start and success will come much more easily. The first steps are crucial.
Requirements Management Tools and Six Steps to Success is about starting in the right direction and keeping going in that direction until success occurs.
Business success
The Six Steps for Success
There exists a very simple set of six steps for guaranteed success in any endeavour. Personal development gurus and business leaders teach these steps at seminars all over the world.
The six steps:
Be very clear of your outcome
Know the outcome in detail
Quantify the outcome with measurable metrics
Ensure that the outcome is possible, even if very ambitious
Take an action to achieve that outcome
Measure the result of that action and determine if it is getting you closer to that outcome
If it is not, then change course
Keep taking action, checking and if necessary, changing course, repeating steps 2 to 4
Never give up, repeating steps 2 to 4 until that outcome is achieved
Whilst that list is very simple, completely lacking in applicable detail and at first glance, completely banal, or even vapid. It should not be dismissed entirely. That simplistic list of steps is applicable to every situation, from a toddler learning to walk, to ensuring an aircraft arrives at its correct destination, to landing a person on Mars.
For example, the aircraft flight computer is aware of its destination and its location and it compares that with the flight plan and takes action by correcting course continually, until it arrives successfully at its destination.
So Where Do Requirements Management Tools Come Into This?
The first step is to be very clear of the outcome. Knowing the desired outcome in detail to a very granular level is essential. It must be possible to describe every part of that outcome. Listing every attribute required in detail. These outcomes can become a repository of requirements and it is these requirements that are to be managed throughout the lifecycle of any project. A Requirements Management tool will manage these requirements through defined processes to ensure that any project ultimately succeeds.
How to Create Requirements?
SMART requirements (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realisable, Traceable), are the best ways to define the specifics of your outcome as requirements. Each requirement should be either an item, piece of equipment, function, process etc. and linked in a hierarchy. For example, a cooling system is a requirement on an engine. That cooling system has a function, which is a requirement. That function must operate within pre-defined parameters, which are requirements. The cooling system is made up of various parts, like a radiator, pipes, pumps. Each of those are requirements with their own functions with operating parameters. All of those are requirements. Even a nut, or a bolt or a screw is a requirement with attributes of size, materials, strength, colour.
How to Manage Requirements?
As is evident from the above, any large system can rapidly become an enormous, labyrinthine mess of hundreds of thousands, or even millions of requirements of every aspect of your system. Try keeping track of those during the systems engineering process from concept to creation.
Unmanageable mess
Every defined and agreed requirement must be met to guarantee the outcome of the project. Each part of the project must be linked back to a requirement, to ensure that the steps 2 to 4 above can satisfy and implement that requirement successfully. But when there are millions of requirements, then help is available.
The Solution
A tool designed to manage all requirements. It must be able to store and link all requirements to every relevant part of the system. That tool should also be able to trace every part of that system back to a requirement. This full checking of every item to every requirement keeps projects on track. It should also be able to find any part of the system which does not link back to a requirement. Such items that do not link back to requirements are evidence of wasted effort and expense.
Cradle is the only tool that has transitive linking, allowing full requirement redundancy checking and so can find wasted items that are not linked back to any requirements.
All your projects are kept fully under control. Cradle can handle all requirements traceability and coverage whilst also linking that into the rest of the systems engineering project. For full systems engineering solutions, with the entire requirements management control system built in, Cradle is the answer. Ensuring that every item is linked to a set of requirements, and no effort is wasted.
Start your six steps to success in order to feel the satisfaction of successful project delivery
Cradle – requirement management tools and the six steps to success.
Learn how to identify, analyse, evaluate, treat and monitor the risks associated with activities or events within your business with this year’s – Risk Management September 2022 course.
“A great opportunity for managers to understand and mitigate risks”
Online Risk Management Course
Businesses that have selected Cradle for their Risk management process can benefit from an in depth understanding on how Cradle can manage your risk process
Risk Management Course 20th to 21st September 2022
“The Risk Management course is designed for project team leaders or managers who administer and manage Risks.
The Cradle Risk Course focuses on providing an introduction to Risk Management in Cradle. We will start by setting up the schema for a small example and use this to manage the risks and provide some example reports. In the final module, we provide a worked example.
However, if you have a larger team or wish to cover multiple topics, courses can be tailored and held at your premises / virtually depending on restrictions and requirements or online at a date and time to suit” see here.
PC/Laptop – internet browser & Cradle installed **
Soft copy course materials, and printed certificate
If you would like to be kept in touch with the details for this Training Course – Risk Management September 20th – 21st 2022 please send an email to salesdetails@threesl.com
Requirements management tools are at the heart of future development in tools for systems engineering. Organisations that are not following and implementing the developments in these tools and utilising them in their projects may well lose out significantly.
What are requirements management tools?
According to Professor Roland Traunmüller, requirements management is the systems engineering activity principally concerned with finding, organising, documenting and tracking requirements for software systems and products / projects in many different industries. Its focus is maintaining traceability. This is defined as the “ability to describe and follow the life of a requirement, in both forwards and backwards direction. i.e. from its origin, through its development and specification, to its subsequent deployment and use, and through all periods of on-going refinement and iteration in any of these phases.”
The need to be sure that any project is continuously and effectively moving towards the goal of satisfying all the required elements of that project is best and most effectively met with a dedicated requirements management tool. This is a tool which is designed from the outset to impose requirements management principles upon the project from the start and continue to impose them through all of the project lifecycle.
What happens to your projects, or indeed, your business if you fail to follow good systems engineering practice? How can your systems’ design properly satisfy requirements that are imprecise or incomplete? How can you implement a requirements management process without the effective deployment of a fully integrated requirements management tool? The project stakeholders lose sight of the requirements in the maze of changes and developments that always naturally occur during the project lifecycle. Time, money and energy are wasted creating and implementing solutions to problems that do not exist.
Let us use an example
An engineering company has won a contract to design and install a heating system in a new office block. The company offering the contract seeks an environmentally friendly, carbon neutral system. It would be cheaper to use existing heating systems available ‘off the shelf’, but they want to win environmental awards for green technology and so they want a new design.
They award the contract to a company that uses fashionable green language, but that company is not using a dedicated and integrated requirements management tool. Their systems are based on taking notes on paper and mobile devices, then transferring them to Microsoft ® Word documents and spreadsheets. They say that this document-centric approach works well, as shown by their low development price.
As their system progresses, they have designated naming conventions for these documents to keep their system from becoming too complicated and losing documents. Inevitably, some employees forget the naming convention, or fail to apply it correctly, or overwrite documents with the wrong content. Before long requirements are lost or forgotten and not included as they pivot from the design phase, or “slip through the cracks” into the testing and implementation phases. These losses are further compounded when changes are required later and there is no communication between the design engineers and the installation engineers and decisions made on the spur of the moment to make changes are not checked against the system’s requirements. Equipment gets designed and installed only then to discover, “Oh no!” when a part does not comply with the new corporate environmental regulations created by the Chief Environmental and Climate Change Officer. Such regulations were incorrectly entered into the manual, document-based process, so the design team didn’t ever see them and the installation engineers were utterly unaware of them! Disaster! The project runs over schedule, over budget, delivers the wrong system and the company’s reputation is tarnished!
All of this could have easily been avoided had they used a fully integrated requirements management tool such as Cradle. Not only does Cradle provide full end-to-end traceability and coverage of all requirements, it is also fully integrated into its Systems Engineering package that handles every part of your full project lifecyle. That means that whatever size or scale of project you are delivering, Cradle can be trusted to hold all your data securely and gives you the confidence to know that every single requirement that is gathered and entered into Cradle. All these requirement scan be tracked throughout your design, testing, implementation, maintenance phases and through to eventual upgrade/replacement or retirement. Any changes and their impacts can be managed fully and properly throughout the entire project lifecycle from concept to creation.
And that means you can enjoy the confidence that your projects can deliver what you promise to deliver on time every time.
We most likely understand this to mean encourage, provoke or urge. Unfortunately there is no underlying tasty treat associated with the phrase. Eggs and Easter eggs may represent the start of a new life or regeneration and are often given at Easter after their consumption would have been prohibited during Lent.
Project
An egg holds the building instructions for a new life, and when fertilised can grow into something great. Like a new life, a project needs to be nurtured in order to grow. However, it must be led in the correct direction, not allowed to grow too fast or out of control for the best success. There will be risks on the way and its progress needs to be monitored and checked.
Go-on
So we urge, cajole and encourage you to keep your projects safe, warm and cared for the only way we know how – in Cradle. Now does anyone fancy taking up the Chicken and Egg debate???
Return
3SL Offices
During April 3SL UK offices are making a phased return to the office. It’s been over 2 years since we’ve sat at our desks. It was a bit of a time capsule moment seeing diaries open on March 2020! You will still be able to email, use webinar, or snail-mail, but if you call us on +44 1229 838867 you may find different voices answer.
Training
Online Cradle Training
TheProject Administration 20th-21st April 2022 course is designed for project team leaders or managers who administer and manage Cradle projects. It will cover user and project administration. It will also include setting up project schemas helping your users to hit the ground running.
Social Media
Twitter
HII Tweet March 2022
We marvelled at how a dock can float in this tweet from HII.
We reviewed the SpeedUpSolR(TM) device, but apparently a number of people have reported difficulty buying it….. SpeedUpSolR(TM) 😉
YouTube
Properties
Updating Item Properties. If you have a large number of items for which you need to change value(s) did you know you can set properties? Take a peek at this method on our YouTube Channel
We were interested to be provided with a SpeedUpSolRTM unit. We thought we’d test the claims and share them with you. The device works by “capturing ambient light waves and amplifying productivity software enhancements” We suspect a little has been lost in translation, however the blurb goes on to explain that generally workers want to complete their work more quickly in the daylight saving summer months (in our case anything after GMT turns to BST), in order to make the best of the rest of the day. By capturing the increased sunlight during these hours it can help speed up a your work by using their proprietary algorithm to assist and second guess the text or keys you are about to press. Once finished employees will have completed their schedule ahead of time and will be able to leave earlier benefiting their well-being.
The Unit
Comprising a “bubble matrix silicon cell panel” which uses lenses based on omnidirectional fly eyes, maximum sunlight is captured in unit around 150mm long. The interface is s standard USB connector. The drivers download automatically, as it supports plug and play.
Testing
We connected the SpeedUpSolRTM to a standard desktop and installed a copy of Cradle. We then closed the blinds on the window to simulate a darker time of day. The unit is balanced atop the monitor facing the window, to achieve maximum exposure. The staff member was then asked to simulate entering data for the requirement they were working on. You’ll see their usual speed of typing. We then opened the blinds to allow maximum light onto the SpeedUpSolRTM. This allowed the software to start its word guessing and action assisting operations. We think you’ll concur, there is a marked increase in speed.
Software
The software bundled with the SpeedUpSolRTM includes an average light level monitor with a rolling 7 day count. It suggests that this can be used to co-inside with maximum productivity bursts for employees. It is also noted that by monitoring the peaks, in winter months people who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) may be able to time their coffee breaks outside to maximise benefit.
Requirements management mastery is a process of ensuring that the goals of any project or endeavour are successfully realised, are timely and that waste, avoidable redundancy and “feature creep” are eliminated. Managing the requirements of any project throughout the lifecycle of that project is essential to save time, money, effort, resources and successfully arrive at the business goal. For this reason, requirements management mastery must be a key focus of all projects.
Following the steps ahead, any project will stay on track, save money and deliver what the client needs as the process itself ensures that outcome. Requirements management mastery is a goal that your business will thrive from.
Rule One: Design the Requirements to be of Most Use
Ensure that all requirements derived from the client are SMART:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realisable
Traceable
Rule Two: Manage the Requirements
Identifying the user’s needs, through user’s needs statements which are then processed to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Traceable, are used to create user requirements, then system requirements should be developed from these user requirements. These ought to be linked to maintain full traceability and coverage throughout the project lifecycle and store all the requirements in a central requirements repository. Cradle is designed from the ground up to manage all requirements with full coverage and traceability, end-to-end, backwards and forwards through its unique transitive linking mechanism for full traceability and coverage from every requirement to every outcome, and from every outcome back to every requirement.
Rule Three: Ensure Constraints are Accounted for
Non functional and non system requirements such as for legal or regulatory compliance must be accounted for and this is useful for ensuring quality is maintained and indeed, built into the system.
Rule Four: Model Requirements
Various modelling tools (built into Cradle) are very useful for understanding requirements in a broader and more understandable way. It can reduce ambiguity and create a much better understanding of how requirements can be achieved.
Step 5: Test Requirements
Ensure that requirements can be tested, through test cases, tests, test results all linked transitively back to the requirements being tested. Cradle’s TEST module (Test, Execution & Recording (TER)) allows you to directly link Test Cases to your requirements, needs, or design elements. You can then define Test Plans and Test Executions to group and run these tests and the tool will record the Test Results against each Test Step.
Requirements management mastery
Rule Six: Be Aware of Business Needs
By analysing business needs, requirements can be optimised to ensure that essential stakeholders are made aware of opportunities to enhance the business and improve innovation.
Rule Seven: Ensure that Changes are Controlled
During any project lifecycle, changes occur which impact requirements. Having tools that manage those changes, tracks them through full traceability and coverage and notifies stakeholders of which parts of the project are impacted by those changes, gives the business a clear advantage, reducing errors, saving time and lots of money.
Rule Eight: Monitor and Track Metrics and Trends
Make use of Cradle to ensure that metrics are identified and learned from. Continuous improvement in requirements definitions and utility leads to better implementation.
Rule Nine: Keep a Repository of Good Requirements
Ensure that a repository of requirements is stored for future analysis and learning. These can be reused or used as templates in the future. Especially non-functional requirements relating to compliance with government or legal standards.
Rule Ten: Ensure that Requirements are Reused
Save time, money and effort by reusing requirements that are still useful. Why re-invent the wheel? Requirements that have been used before will hold useful lessons. Were they changed, amended? Why? What was learnt? Cradle’s Adaptations for reusability is very useful here.
Why is Requirements Management Essential for your Business?
Imagine you are renovating an old live-aboard boat. You have to ensure that the hull is sound and has no leaks. That the ballast is in the correct place to keep the vessel balanced, you need to upgrade the plumbing, the electric circuits, the gas installations, all whilst designing the living quarters, the saloon, the galley, bathroom and bedrooms.
There are many interesting videos on YouTube created by people doing precisely that and what stands out most, is that none of their original plans survive first contact with reality. Discovering that the constraints of the boat safety certificate means that they must have a specific number of brackets per foot for gas pipelines, or cost of materials suddenly rising threefold mid-renovation, or discovering that fittings simply will not fit where they require them, means mid refit changes to their plans. Buying a water pump for waste water, only to discover the inlet and outlet are different sizes, requires buying new adapters or pipes. Often this means waiting longer for parts to be delivered before a task can be completed and the budget rising.
Each of the areas of the boat to be renovated is a requirement. How many leisure batteries do you need? Without doing a power audit, and knowing the full wattage of all your electrical equipment, that is guesswork. You do not want to be out on a month’s cruise, only to discover that your washing machine will not work due to inadequate electrical supply, so creating a set of fully researched requirements, and how those requirements will be met, is essential to a successful renovation.
Requirements Management for Narrowboat Cruising
The same problems arise when renovating cars, houses or anything that requires a multitude of interconnecting and inter-dependent parts. Often A cannot be completed until B is completed, then whilst completing B one discovers that C, D and E are needed too, but they cannot be completed until A is completed. Around in circles one goes, spending ever more time and money until the project fails and has to be sold off for someone else to attempt to fix it.
Achieving and maintaining control over all the requirements is even more essential in business. Every project your business undertakes, requires analysis, design, implementation and testing phases. Without having a firm understanding of each and every requirement within that analysis, unplanned, forced changes will have a dramatic effect upon timescales, deliverability, functionality and costs. It can be the difference between a successful project and total failure.
The cost of a project requires a deep, granular level of understanding of exactly, in detail, every requirement of that project. It is necessary to know how each requirement will be satisfied and implemented, how much it will cost, how long it will take and a risk register for if any of those requirements cannot be met within the project plan. It also requires knowledge of how such a requirement can be changed during the project, what impact that change will have upon other parts of the project and how much time and money it requires to implement that change.
Requirements Management is the Key to Unlocking Success in all Projects
Requirements management is the key to unlocking success in all projects.
Not only does having a full requirements management system allow your business to ensure that all requirements are identified, assessed, agreed, costed, time allocated, tested, implemented, tested again and signed off, it also gives you magical powers when changes to requirements are forced upon you. A fully integrated requirements management plan within a project plan, that includes full coverage and traceability, backwards and forwards, with transitive linking, gives you magical powers to see, at any point in the full project, the status of all requirements at any point in time, but which functions, objects or other parts of the project have crept in, for which there is no requirement at all, exposing the project to unnecessary risk, cost and problems. Why are you spending time and money on something that is not required?
But the client keeps changing their mind… It is a very common problem. As a project progresses, the client comes back with changes. Regulations change, requirements change, personnel change. This cannot be prevented, sadly, but what this means is that you have an opportunity to see very quickly what impacts such changes will have upon all areas of the project.
How can someone magically know which parts of a project are impacted with changes in requirements?
Cradle provides a fully integrated requirements management system within a full lifecycle product. One product that supports your entire systems engineering lifecycle. Cradle covers everything from initial requirements gathering, through analysis, design, testing, implementation with full baselining. Cradle is designed to control many variants and projects, with full traceability and coverage, end-to-end with unique transitive linking. This grants you full and complete control over every requirement at every point in the project and gifts you the ability to see how every part of the project can link back to any requirement, and if any requirement changes, to see what effects that has on other parts of the project and to see if any part of your project is NOT linked to any requirement and is therefore redundant effort and expense.
3SL Cradle
Always in control, always on top of every part of your project at all times. Do not be the person who has to sell up, because requirements spiraled out of control and the project failed.
Most English native readers will understand the text above. Although we must admit it is fairly atrocious. We are so used to reading context, that even when letters are missing or transposed we still understand. Sometimes [sic ]don’t even notice the errors. We have come acustomed [sic] to our browsers and text document processors telling us the spelling of a word is not recognised. However, unless there is some form of context processing too, a smelling [sic] mistake would get through even if a sbelling [sic] mistake was highlighted.
Proof
1m not 1mm high
March the 8th recognised proof reading day, which may be a delight for the pedants among or is that amongst us. However, it does highlight the importance of peer review. Proof reading is generally defined as “a process of finding and correcting textual mistakes before it is published” Elements that are easily overlooked when you read information back to yourself are often picked out faster by another. You “know” what you intended to write, and the human brain is very good at telling you that’s what is on the page.
Typos
It may be blatantly obvious you meant the EV socket was to be placed 1m from the floor but that extra ‘m‘ that remained in your text was a typo. Now no one can plug their car into the socket that is 1mm from the floor. You would hope the contractor would question this. However, not all errors are as obvious, incorrectly specifying a tolerance of 0.01mm or 0.1mm could either mean some costly but unnecessary machining, or components that don’t fit depending on the use case. Language semantics can also get in the way of clear communication. Peers are likely to question whether you really wanted to separate those who may consider cannibalism; “To avoid smells, the train buffet service should segregate eating passengers”. Whilst in reality it is unlikely to be misconstrued, it may show a less than professional approach to your stakeholders especially in a presentation or final review.
Discussions
In Cradle we have covered the benefits of reviews and formal base-lining. However we also advocate the use of Discussionsas a method of reviewing and recording comments and notes.
Checkers
Cradle supports a Conformance Checker to examine the correctness of requirements against a set of language / semantic checks. If you have ToolSuite you can also access a SpellChecker to examine your item’s text.
Training
Online Cradle Training
Don’t forget to book to ensure your place on the courses in the 2022 Public training course calendar . If you have questions or want tailored or on-site courses please contact salesdetails@threesl.com
ISO9001
3SL Certificate Number 16926 ISO 9001
3SL are proud to announce their third year recertification for ISO9001. The team working with the audit said we passed with flying colours and there were no non-conformances. This is a testimony to all who have helped throughout the year improving and recording our processes.
The ISO says of the scheme
“ISO 9001 sets out the criteria for a quality management system and is the only standard in the family that can be certified to (although this is not a requirement). It can be used by any organization, large or small, regardless of its field of activity. In fact, there are over one million companies and organizations in over 170 countries certified to ISO 9001. This standard is based on a number of quality management principles including a strong customer focus, the motivation and implication of top management, the process approach and continual improvement. These principles are explained in more detail in ISO’s quality management principles. Using ISO 9001 helps ensure that customers get consistent, good-quality products and services, which in turn brings many business benefits.”[1]
Social Media
Twitter
ZF Group Tweet Feb 2022
We looked at the steep increase ZF Group have seen in torques that generation chains need to handle as wind turbines increase in size.
We also decided whilst there is a time for pancakes the time line of cooking them may not be suited to SysML modelling 😉
YouTube
Frame Data Storage
Did you know you can store your data in Cradle in several ways? In the database, in a file, as a reference or retrieve it by command? Why not take a peek at the possibilities.
February the month of Saint Valentine, according to Wikipedia a 3rd-century Roman saint. The tails of his beheading as a martyr and the distribution of his bones are quite horrific. A far cry from the modern celebration. It wasn’t until around the 14th century that he became associated as the patron saint of lovers. Apparently this was greatly promoted by the writings of Chaucer. Quite an achievement in reuse and adaptation!
Reign
Film Camera
This month also saw Her Majesty The Queen celebrate 70 years on the throne. The first British Monarch to celebrate a Platinum Jubilee, she will have seen many technological advances and changes during her time on the throne. To illustrate the pace of progress think about a camera. During her coronation she may have been photographed by one of the first Polaroid instant cameras. In the 70s one of the first point and shoot cameras would have been the order of the day. On engagements in the 80’s one of the first digital cameras or a disposable camera could have been used, and in the 00’s snaps on phones would be the norm.
Storm
Storm
Naming storms is apparently a way to make things more memorable. A number or identifier is easy to forget. However, many people will remember whether it was Storm Dudley or Eunice that felled the tree in their garden.
In conclusion, with tortuous metaphor bending…..
We Love engineering, we actively promote the concept of reuse and Adaptation.
We would encourage you to support an iterative and baselined design process, building on and improving the previous version whilst retaining traceability.
Cradle supports IDs, Names, Groups, and Comments for all item types. Making sure you use all these nomenclatures will aid you finding, discussing or grouping your requirement and design assets. After all would you rather query on ID343 or “Surface finish” ?
Training
Online Cradle Training
The 2022 Public training course calendar has now been released. This has courses covering the main functions of Cradle. It is ideal if you are on-boarding new staff, or are just new to Cradle. These online courses are tutor led so there is full interactivity and ability to ask questions. You’ll also be able to benefit from the questions and experience of other candidates.
These public courses are in addition to our individual company offerings. If your company has a large number of trainees for instance, or wants on-site training we will put on a separate course. Additionally if you need a course tailoring to your industry/implementation you should contact salesdetails@threesl.com
INCOSE have updated their vendor tool listings with a new database, the Systems Engineering Tools Database (SETDB). We have fully updated our entry and system engineers can search the database with their INCOSE membership, or an SETDB membership through systemsengineeringtools.com.
We are listed under 3SL and Cradle and our competencies listed in all available categories within their database. This will be added to as they further update their database capabilities.
Social Media
Twitter
Northrop Grumman Hydroponics
We wondered just how a seedling will function in space. Without gravity how will it grow up? Its leaves will be able to grow towards a light, but at the time of sprouting, which way will the root grow? All vital information, being worked on by @NorthropGrumman if we are to grow crop resources in space.
Love is in the air we tweeted a Valentine message and reminded you that we use the hashtag #LoveEngineering to retweet and highlight stories from our customers and general engineering accomplishments. Why not join us in promoting good engineering stories?
Plimsoll Line
We also noted that Samuel Plimsoll was to be congratulated on developing the simple safe load ship markings. This used the engineering principle of displacement in different salinity. Mistakenly we thought this had nothing to do with the deck shoes of the same name, thanks to one eagle eyed reader. They pointed out “Plimsolls, the shoes, were named in his honour in 1876 (when his whistleblowing campaign for a loadline had made him a household name) by a sales rep for the Liverpool Rubber Company, because, being canvas above and rubber underneath, the shoes could only be safely immersed in water up to a certain point – like a merchant ship. ”
YouTube
Maximise Productivity
You’ll have read that the new Public Training Calendar has been released. Just to emphasise the benefits of training, for those that like something a little more visual (to send to their boss maybe), here’s our mini promo.
