Category Archive: Uncategorized
2016
Written by: Tony Harris, January 5, 2015…err..2016
So how many times I wonder, am I going to write the year as 2015. How many times will I get frustrated with some on-line form that I fill in, as all the data is wiped out because I typed in the incorrect date at the end?
E&I’s fiscal year began on Oct 1st so we already have a quarter behind us. And it has been good so far. Activity seems to have picked up especially in China. Next month of course will see the traditional Chinese New Year – The Year of the Monkey. Max, Nigel and Marley are very excited about this. They seem to think that it is in their honor. Especially Nigel who as I am sure you know, actually comes from Beijing and Marley who although he comes from Jamaica, his father, Bob, joined E&I from Shanghai.
I am off to the UK on Friday to visit customers there; Precision Acoustics and NPL. But, don’t tell Max, Nigel or Marley – they’ll want to tag along.
Best wishes for a happy and prosperous New Year
That Sick Feeling
Written by: Tony Harris, January 4, 2016
There is nothing more that makes me sick to my stomach than when I get an e-mail, or one of my employees tell me, that one of our amplifiers has failed in the field. You may think I jest, but I do not. A feeling of panic and nausea overwhelms me. It does not seem to matter whether the unit is under warranty or not. It really is quite irrational.
As the old adage goes; it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness. We always address the issue and ensure that it is dealt with expeditiously, completely and, most importantly, that the customer is more than satisfied with our response.
E&I amplifiers seldom fail and I should know by now that our response will be such as to really “wow” the customer. So I should know that, as my mother would always say: it will be alright in the end. But none of the rational arguments prevail when I am told that a unit has failed. I am not sure whether they ever will or if I will ever overcome the feeling – I hope so.
Lobotomy
Written by: Tony Harris, December 23, 2015
I noted early in my career, in R&D, there would be times when someone would leave the engineering field and transfer into sales & marketing. All of a sudden, everything in their world became easier to accomplish. Those of us left, struggling to define design rules for processes with enormous statistical variations or to productize a transistor that we had only had a couple of wafer runs of, came to the conclusion that there must be some sort of hazing that occurred on joining the marketing department. We believed that the result of the hazing was similar to that which would be achieved by a full frontal lobotomy.
Our Fab manager where I worked was French; he had a quote on his wall “La critique est aisée, et l’art est difficile”. The quote by French dramatist, Philippe Néricault Destouches, literally translates to: criticism is easy and art is difficult.
And so the battle lines were drawn, we in building 140 designing, creating and inventing and those in down the road in building 211 were marketing and selling. They would accuse us of being lazy, ivory tower and irresponsive, we would accuse them of ignorance, stupidity and a desire to sell their grandmother’s coffin, if they could make a buck.
Of course what happened as battle lines were drawn and silos established was that the customer was forgotten. To us in R&D he/she was the unfortunate detractor to those in S&M he/she was the slave driver, perhaps the dominatrix.
So how was the conundrum resolved? How did the Berlin Wall come down?
Man Flu
Written by: Tony Harris, December 16, 2015
I am suffering. Out of nowhere, I have been hit by an exceptionally strong strain of Man Flu. As I clutch to the fast fading embers of life, so I begin the process of getting myself ready to make peace with my maker. My wife plied me with drugs to help stay the inevitable fate, so the priest hasn’t been called yet.
I was listening to a program, the other day, on the BBC about ‘coffin academies’ in South Korea. Apparently South Korea has one of the highest hourly work weeks of any nation bar Mexico. To encourage the employees to feel good about life they have mock funerals. Here the attendees write their own obituary and then are placed in a coffin, where they meditate and consider how good life is. Then after some period of time they let you out.
I assure you that a good dose of man flu has a similar effect and avoids any claustrophobic consequences. With all the advances in therapeutic ultrasound, one would think that they would turn their attention to finding a cure for man flu.
I think one of the funniest people ever to have lived, was Spike Milligan. He wrote his own epitaph, which is written on his gravestone in Gaelic. “Duirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite” it translates to “I told you I was ill”.
ISTU
Written by: Tony Harris, December 15, 2015
Well the end of the year is galloping toward us. I’m heading south for the Christmas week, so I will not be having a ‘White Christmas’ – which is just fine by me; bah-humbug.
But I’ll be back for the 1st and so bring in the New Year. Last year I arrived back from England on the 31st of December and so did not even stay up to see the New Year in as jet lag got the better of me. This year, I’ll be here and will have no excuses.
I had an e-mail from Gail ter Haar earlier in the week reminding me about the ISTU conference that is being held in Tel Aviv in March 2016, which she is helping to organize. How quickly will that be upon us? I have never been to Israel and so am looking forward to it very much. There are a lot of companies there involved in ultrasound; Insightec being one.
It should be a really good conference as so much progress has been made over the last year; there will be a great sense of excitement.
If you go; don’t forget to stop by the E&I booth to say hello!
Cheers,
Tony Harris
The Golden Snowball Contest
Written by: Tony Harris, December 14, 2015
E&I is based in Rochester NY. As such, it is one of the contenders for the ‘Golden Snowball Contest’. Last year Syracuse won with a 132” total snow fall. Buffalo was third with 129” and Rochester 3rd with 112”. Rochester last won in the 2012-2013 season. It is a competition that I always hope we will lose.
E&I implemented a new ERP system (enterprise Resource Planning) in October and this provide better visibility of our inventory, orders with suppliers and other resources necessary in planning. However, I noted that there was no field to account for snow fall.
Buffalo, Syracuse and Rochester, are all on Lake Ontario and in the winter, air will drift across the warm lakes absorbing lots of moisture. It will then hit the cold land and dump its cargo. Those of us living in Upstate NY are well aware of what ‘lake effect snow’ means. It means we get dumped on! Of course the kids love snow days, but when you are in a manufacturing company and trying to meet commitments to customers, it makes even the best planning in the world, a challenge.
What really scares me is that we haven’t had any snow this year yet. I know that this has nothing to do with global warming and so I think that January, February and March are going to make up for no snow in November or December.
In one week’s time at least the days will start getting longer; that’s a nice thought – I’m trying to stay positive…
The Weakest Link
Written by: Tony Harris, December 11, 2015
Do you remember the days when stereo systems were bought all as separate items? Do you know what I mean by ‘stereo system’? Well for those of you who don’t and just download your tunes on to your phone or player let me take you on a walk down memory lane.
Each component of an audio system was purchased separately. One would buy the turntable to play their records on, a receiver to pickup radio stations, speakers and an amplifier to drive them. Everyone had their own choices. I would salivate at the thought of a ‘Bang Olufsen’ turntable with an Arcam receiver, a Crown amplifier and a pair of Gale speakers. But the thing that you had to remember when selecting the components of your system was that just like any chain, it is only as strong as its weakest link.
The same goes for an RF test system. If you buy the best amplifier (obviously an E&I amplifier) then you also want to make sure that you buy a good signal generator and make sure that the cables you buy are a good quality shielded cable. Many problems in set ups can come down to poor cabling issues.
Communication
Written by: Tony Harris, December 10, 2015
This certainly must be the age of mass communication. Don’t you think? In 1970 the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar debuted and in a song at the end of the musical, Tim Rice’s lyrics have Judas tease Christ with the lines: “If you’d come today you could have reached a whole nation, Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication.” So 45 years ago we thought we lived in the age of mass communication. No cell phones, no internet, no wifi, but we thought we had it all down pat. Makes you wonder what mass communication will mean 45 years from now.
Today I have an app on my I-phone called ‘translate.’ I can talk into it and it will translate my words into lots of different languages. I can scan text of several foreign tongues and it immediately displays it back to me in English. All these things further our ability to communicate.
Science however, is an area that needs work. Physicists, engineers, biologists, chemists and those in the medical profession have devised a language of their own. Many of the fundamental laws of physics are described purely in mathematics, because, quite frankly it is a lot easier. Einstein’s theory of special relativity is described in four papers or E=MC^2. OK I simplify a tad, but not much.
So whereas a scientist can pick up a work of Dickens, read it and at least get something from it, an English student could be more than a little challenged by Lederman’s book describing the Higgs boson particle.
Not fair you say; if you are on the arts side of life, and you’re probably right, but if it makes you feel any better; scientists can confuse each other by talking different languages and need to translate from one dimension to another, one unit of measure to another. All E&I’s amplifiers are rated in terms of the power that they can deliver. However, many of our customers are just interested in the voltage potential that they can develop across given impedance. One of the major challenges we face is communicating with our customers and to understand their requirements in their terms, translate them to our terms, solve the problem and then provide the answer back to them in their terms.
But we are good at it. Try us!
Cheers,
Tony
The Winter of Our Discontent
Written by: Tony Harris, December 9, 2015
“Now is the winter of our discontent.”
When Richard (the future king, Richard III) opens the play with this quote, it is actually not to protest the winter but to celebrate the summer and the upturn in his family’s fortunes. It is often misused. I hate winter, I would be quite happy to see snow only on Christmas cards or picture post cards, where it looks pretty. The reality is that it is cold, seeps inside your clothes, melts and freezes seemingly at will to cause general discomfort. I really should domicile at about zero degrees latitude, I’d have a much better attitude.
When winter will finally leave us, in Upstate NY, in April, the roads will open up showing the damage that the successive freezing and melting has brought upon them. Pot holes will appear everywhere popping up overnight like zits on an acne-ravaged teenager.
It is amazing the destruction that can be caused by the heating and cooling of any material. The majority of failures in electronic equipment are caused by thermo-mechanical stress. If thermal management is not properly adhered to, solder joints will be ripped apart, active devices such as transistors can have their leads pulled out from underneath them. Just like the roads in upstate New York, the constant thermal cycling can cause catastrophic failure.
The guide lines and ‘best known methods’ that were wrought over decades of design, testing and reliability cycling are embedded in our philosophy at E&I. So you need not fear about the temperatures as far as the reliability of your E&I amplifier is concerned. And if you are here in May you could say: Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious by the summer of Upstate New York.
On the Shoulders of Giants
Written by: Tony Harris, December 7, 2015
Sir Isaac Newton quoted: If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. This was a reference to a quote by the philosopher, Bernard of Chartres, who had lived about 3 and a half centuries earlier. Newton was being uncharacteristically humble when he compared the progress that he had made, to the ideas of others that he had made use of.
But it is certainly true, as we look back at the progress of all forms of study, that we have been able to build on the work of previous eras and generations. For example, I sit here and type on a little laptop that has more computing power than was aboard the Apollo spacecraft and has its foundation, its roots, that can be traced back to work that was being done in the 1940s and 50s.
We I-phone and FaceTime with more ease than Captain Kirk could have dreamed of. Yet it was in 1861 that James Maxwell published the fundamental equations that describe electromagnetic radiation; the basic medium by which all modern data transfer travels. Hey, that is a long time ago. The first uses of RF amplification go back a long way.
The names of physicists, scientists, biologists, chemists, doctors and more pave the route from darkness to understanding. So we should not become conceited when we look at our achievements. Great though they are, they were made possible by standing on the shoulders of giants.
John Salisbury who attributed the ‘shoulders of giants’ quote to Chartres, wrote in 1159: Between a tyrant and a prince there is this single or chief difference, that the latter obeys the law and rules the people by its dictates, accounting himself as but their servant.
Surely it was this level of understanding that allowed the Magna Carta to be feasible a half century later. We need to be cognizant of this when we judge and try to comprehend, peoples who do not have the luxury of standing on the shoulders of such giants.