Workshop: Process Trouble Shooting

Trouble shooting is a bread-and-butter skill for all engineers. Since the 1970’s, we at McMaster have been teaching process trouble shooting as part of our design sequence in the fourth year of the chemical engineering curriculum. This work was pioneered by Dr. Don Woods and has been continued by Tom Marlin, Carlos Filipe, Prashant Mhaskar, and Kevin Dunn. The workshop will consist of two activities. First, Dr. Marlin will introduce the fundamentals of the trouble shooting method through an interactive lecture-discussion. Attendees will learn the six steps and apply them sequentially to a problem introduced during the lecture. Second, the attendees will breakout into three-person “triads” and perform three exercises. During the exercises, each person will view the process through three perspectives; the trouble shooter, the observer and the supplier of feedback. What will you gain from this workshop? - Practitioners will sharpen their procedures for solving those time-critical problems involving diagnosis and quick solution - Professors will see how to teach trouble shooting within the design sequence and learn about available resources - Students will build trouble-shooting skills that students at McMaster consistently rate as one of the most valuable from their university education The material for the group exercises will be provided during the workshop. Those excited about the topic (and who wouldn’t be) can learn more detail in his Operability learning materials; the chapter on Troubleshooting will be made available to attendees.