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Follow three rules and save time, work and frustration.
Most of you at one time or another are called upon to troubleshoot & pumping system you are responsible for.
Some of you are self-taught and learned troubleshooting skills through long and tedious trial and error, studying sometimes complicated technical manuals, or picking the brains of product application engineers.
Like all skills, some people are naturally better at this than others and seem to have a knack for seeing what confounds another. But those talented at troubleshooting all generally have a system they follow for uncovering the subtle secrets of a misbehaving product. There are general techniques that can be learned and applied to any system you are called upon to troubleshoot-whether its a malfunctioning automobile or a submersible pumping system.
First, lets try to define exactly what troubleshooting is. When asked, many would reply that its simply figuring out whats wrong. While true, that definition is a little too vague and doesnt provide any framework or guidance.
One of the cleverest troubleshooters of all time was Sherlock Holmes. While Holmes never had to deal with tricky electronic controls are submersible pumping systems, much can be learned from his approach to solving problems. He was forever fond of reminding Dr. Warson that once all possibilities are eliminated, whatever remains no matter bow bizarre must be the truth. Holmes technique is essentially a process of elimination made by careful observation. That is the essence of good troubleshooting.
Here are three general rules to follow, which can help and add some structure to your troubleshooting technique.
Rule 1: Follow a systematic and efficient process of elimination.
The process of elimination can be tedious and time consuming. But it can be systematic and efficient as well. To illustrate, let me offer as an example a technique commonly used by software programmers to guess the value of analog voltage. The technique is referred to as successive approximation and can demonstrate how posing and answering questions in the correct order can make a huge difference in the time it takes to eliminate all the possible answers and arrive at the correct one.
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The process of elimination can be tedious and time consuming. But it can be systematic and efficient as well. To illustrate, let me offer as an example a technique commonly used by software programmers to guess the value of analog voltage. The technique is referred to as successive approximation and can demonstrate how posing and answering questions in the correct order can make a huge difference in the time it takes to eliminate all the possible answers and arrive at the correct one.
Pick a number between 0 and 100 and ask someone to guess what it is. Many will start by guessing a random number in the vain hope that they can read your mind. Is it 337 No. Is it 797 No. and so on. This approach is neither systematic nor efficient, but one used by the average person. They may eventually guess correctly, but it is difficult for them to keep track of the numbers that have been guessed.
In the world of troubleshooting real systems, and in particular our companys constant pressure system, there are those that employ this method of solving problems. They being by randomly replacing one of the components in the system to see if that fixes the problem. When that doesnt work, they replace another component. In too many cases the entire system will eventually by replaced and the problem, which in the end turns our to be application related, will remain.
Getting back to our example, another person may try to be systematic about guessing the unknown number and guess in sequence, starting with the number 1. Is it 17 No. Is it the number 27 No, and so on. While systematic, it is not efficient as the person may have to ask 100 questions before arriving at the answer.
The technique referred to as successive approximation is both systematic and efficient. Lets say the number we are trying to guess is 79. The process begins by asking if the number is greater than 50. The answer is yes, immediately eliminating 50% of the possible answers. Next questions, is the number greater than 757 Yes. Again, 50% of the possible answers are gone. By asking only two questions we have eliminated 75% of the possible answers. the process continues by splitting the reminder in half and determining in which half the number resides.
While you will never have to guess a number to solve application problems, the example illustrates that by systematically asking questions that eliminate the maximum number of possibilities, you can solve problems much more efficiently, saving time and frustration.
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