Real-Life Decision Making
The navy has asked you to design a new arresting tape for aircraft carrier
landings. This is a huge contract worth a lot of money. You have to make sure
you do it right, and do it on budget. This tape is used to slow down the jets
on the carrier deck. It is to be a very large fabric, at least 300 meters
long.
You figure out what the tape has to do. Then you select the proper materials
that would allow the smoothest landing possible. You are able to identify
some new types of yarn that would do the job well. You are also able to design
a new way of weaving the yarns together to further enhance their performance.
After you have come up with your design and how it should all be put together,
you look to find someone to weave the sample for you. You need the sample
so that some experimental testing can be done before you go ahead and complete
the final project. Since this is a very important project, you want to make
sure that it works.
Unfortunately, you have come across a problem. The yarn you wanted to use
is new, and is not produced in high volume. If the idea works, the navy would
need to buy more yarn per year than the manufacturer can currently make. The
manufacturer simply doesn't have enough people on staff to handle such
an order.
"This shows how sometimes the mathematics does not solve the entire problem,"
says textile engineer Chris Pastore. In this case, you had a good answer from
an engineering point of view. But it was not a good answer from a manufacturing
perspective.
You can reduce the amount of new yarn that would be used in the tape
and change the weave design to something that the weavers would be capable
of producing. Or you have to find a way to solve the manpower problem at the
manufacturing company.
What do you do?