Redundancy and Culture

Abstract

Chris and Fred discuss the role redundancy plays in an organization’s culture … especially one that needs to maintain redundant systems and plants.

Key Points

Join Chris and Fred as they discuss how having redundancy (or perceived redundancy) in a system has on the culture of the people who use, operate, maintain, or otherwise rely on that system. Redundancy is not always a good thing …

Topics include:

Complacency. How many organizations deliberately ‘drop the ball’ or ‘cut corners on maintenance’ on systems that have redundancy? Lots. When managerial and bureaucratic lunatics run amok, pressure often emerges to save money today at the expense of anything that might happen tomorrow. This can mean people convince themselves that, because there is a triple-redundant pumping system, we can ‘get away’ with just two (and sometimes one) working. We’ll worry about that system tomorrow. The problem is that designers don’t include redundancy haphazardly – more redundant systems increase mass, space budget, maintenance bills, and so on. So if there are redundant components or subsystems, there is always a good reason for this.
Proactivity. That’s right! Redundancy can lead to complacency, but it can also allow organizations to be proactive. For example, having redundant pumps allows a proactive organization to plan maintenance for redundant components while the primary component is still functioning, and then switch components over to perform the same in reverse. This allows downtime to be minimized.
Lateral thinking. (Space) satellites used to be huge, multi-billion-dollar behemoths that took years to build and had to last for decades. Then a bunch of graduate students thought about creating small satellites no bigger than a shoebox, made from readily accessible parts. Are they reliable? Not particularly. But you can more cheaply launch 100 small satellites in and around those old-school behemoth satellites. So you now have 100 redundant satellites that collectively provide a very reliable service – even if no one satellite is particuarly reliable.
Lack of thinking. Again … redundancy can trigger both good and bad behaviours. What happens when something goes wrong on your factory floor or plant? Does a really expensive RCA seem a bridge to far … so let’s just add another production line. Millions of dollars spent. Very visibly demonstrable change. But it might mean we never come to terms with optimizing our main production line so that it stops failing every five minutes!

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