h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Tolerance - How Wrong Can We Be? - A87774259
Author: Florida Sailor - U235886

Here is a fun little entry, The title popped into my head and thought I would give it a go. Let me know what you think, hopefully it will provide a smile or two, as well as being informative.

FS

This is nice. Lots of thoughts spring to mind (I'll be back).

In the meantime

>not only do we have cut new pieces > have to cut

Truly percussion work like watch-making? No, it's watch-breaking that needs percussion. Precision?

I read in the book 'Selling Ben Cheever' that the Toyota factories in Japan treated machine tolerances as a competitive sport, while the Americans treated them as tick-boxes. The Japanese produced work well within the tolerances, the Americans barely within. The result was Japanese cars worked better, lasted better, sold better. Ben Cheever worked for some years as a car salesman, and reports that everyone in the dealership dreamed of being assigned to selling Toyotas, which sold themselves. Those selling American cars were working to bamboozle their customers with lies and confusion; they saw them purely as victims.

I do like this Entry I have issues with tolerance in many areas - particularly when using a saw to cut wood. I always forget that there will be a little bit of wood lost to the sawdust, and it usually comes from the length that I'd measured - not the scrap side.

For the same reason it is easier to knit a garment to size rather than cut out fabric for a shirt. You can always unravel your knitting and start again.


However, although your title is thought provoking - I think it may be putting reviewers off.

[This is not an entry about how to treat others with differing social, ethnic or political beliefs, although we encourage everyone to get along]

You address the problem in your introduction. I wonder whether people are actually expecting an entry on social tolerance and are uninterested in such a subject?

Also, at a later date when people are searching for information on tolerances in engineering for instance, a more explanatory title, sub title and introduction would allow readers to find this.

I will fully admit I *love* the title! It looks like bit of Daily mail nastiness and it's not. In fact i am really looking forward to tweeting the entry with the title as it is.

That said I do see lanza's point completely.

I like the title - and the idea. You might change it to 'Tolerance and the Art of Measurement'? People still wouldn't know, but it would be searchable.

You might go back and re-address your hook at the end, though - say something like, 'Tolerance in human relations is a good thing. How much variance can be tolerated in machine-tooling depends upon specs.' Or similar?

Just random thoughts here.

Made a few revisions using thoughts from the thread and added a new section on wear.

Although I fully understand LB's thought on the title I am still reluctant to change it.

As I said in post 1 the title came first for this one, I was hoping to grab those who saw it as a social entry to enter and get hooked.

I hoped that I had enough of a reputation here to get the regulars to read as I generally to not rant, especially not in Peer Review.

When (not if) we get edited status I believe the headers will give us enough hits on the web searches, if I am wrong say so.

Let's let it run for another few days and then I may consider changing it, but not a lot.

FS

Added 'Measuring' to title.

FS

I like the subject and I like the title especially

We get the concept pretty quickly, so I reckon it could benefit from something to enliven it somewhere. Do you have an interesting story on the subject? Maybe there's a large engineering project which failed because tolerances weren't taken into consideration, for example?

Icy

Strictly speaking this is not about tolerance but rather about tolerances. However, I also love the provocative original version of the title.

Hi Icy

Thanks for your comment, I have not worked in any high tolerance situations, and most of my experience is in the crude US style of imperial measurements. I have tried to convert to metric as best I can here so it may have made me reluctant to add more exacting measures. I'm not sure there needed here. I have added a link to a BMW recall due to a tolerance problem and related a story from a company I worked for many years ago. I do not want to go too far afield from a simple entry.

Recumbentman

>Strictly speaking this is not about tolerance but rather about tolerances.

That is true as I speak about several different sorts of tolerances in the entry, but the term tolerance is perfectly acceptable to a single instance, see the link. I'm glad you like the title, I don't think the addition of 'Measuring' is too bad as it is still nebulous and may give more hits.

FS

Sure, fine by me. Do you feel inclined to incorporate my human-interest Toyota story? No recognition required.

There's an interesting recent postscript to that Toyota story, of course. They had well-publicised quality issues a couple of years back, but I'm not sure you can attribute these to engineering tolerances. I think they just decided to cut corners in their tried and tested Lean/Six Sigma processes. (I'd need to research it)

Hi there Florida Sailor

I really enjoyed reading this as the subject happens to ring my bell.

With regard to the title, personally I think that h2 entry titles should be intriguing rather than mundane and I think that this one fits the bill as it is.

My only nitpick is with the instance cited in 'What Happens if Tolerances are not Met?' For me this doesn't seem to be an issue of 'tolerance'. Rather, it seems to me to be more to do with a procedural misunderstanding by the operators. To my shame though, I can't think of a good example that would work in this context except perhaps (loosely) the Hubble telescope fault.

Anyway it's a good read and I enjoyed it.

Thanks

Deke

Recumbentman;

I did very much enjoy your story about Toyota, it inspired the second paragraph of 'The Cost of Tolerance'. I am a little reluctant to add it in total to the entry for several reasons, I did not not read it myself, so I am unsure of the context and accuracy of the statements, they also seen overly generalized and I would rather not singe out any company by name in the entry. That said I would love to see it as a post when we hit the front page!

On a side note I just happened to switch the Japanese with the Bavarians as I wanted to mention a region, rather than a country, for diversity and BMW came to mind as a producer of well made cars. A little later last night I went to look for failures caused by tolerance errors, as suggested by Icy North, I was quite surprised to find on of the best examples was BMW, And it involved pressed interference fits, which was the first example I went into detail about.

Thanks Deke;

I defence of my story about the two men and the tape, I intended it to be more of how a simple mistake in communication could cause a tolerance problem. This is an incident that I have personal knowledge about. Although I was not holding either end of the tape, I was a designer for the corporation and we were given a binder listing all the mistakes about once a moth and sign our initials that we had read it.

After 3 Mile Island we had meetings with film and handouts, it was our unit., but I was in the other division . We were all looking for a job shortly after.

FS

[…for what it may be worth category]

Standards [tolerances] were introduced [or at least instituted in a major way] as the industrial revolution tried to mass produce automobiles.

Different cultures have different ideas about how to achieve the same ends.
[The Japanese vs. USA]

Within one culture are subcultures that modify how tolerances will be used.
[The culture that produces a car, an airplane, a spaceship, or a nuclear reactor are all very different cultures.]

Toyota seems to have gotten into trouble when they underestimated how foreign suppliers would understand the same specifications [tolerances].

The Eurotunnel stands out in my mind as a high profile example of a cross-cultural engineering success; the tolerances achieved were quite laudable and newsworthy.

Æ
Such a good idea, would be nice to expand it…

Thank you for your input AE

>Standards [tolerances] were introduced [or at least instituted in a major way] as the industrial revolution tried to mass produce automobiles.

Added a short section on this, however interchangeable parts date back a bit further, and are actually a totally different subject.

>Different cultures have different ideas about how to achieve the same ends.
[The Japanese vs. USA]

This is a common thought, but I have not seen it proven.

>Within one culture are subcultures that modify how tolerances will be used.
[The culture that produces a car, an airplane, a spaceship, or a nuclear reactor are all very different cultures.]

Actually the word you need to use is discipline, not culture, and the difference not how, but which tolerance standard to use.

>Toyota seems to have gotten into trouble when they underestimated how foreign suppliers would understand the same specifications [tolerances].

No, Toyota seems to have gotten into trouble for not bothering to inspect the parts they had manufactured by others.

>The Eurotunnel stands out in my mind as a high profile example of a cross-cultural engineering success; the tolerances achieved were quite laudable and newsworthy.

Actually digging tunnels from both end that meet in the middle by teams out of sight of each other dates well back into antiquity. James Michner gives a good example in his novel 'The Source' which, although fictional, is based on real archaeological records.


>Such a good idea, would be nice to expand it

I am trying very hard not to expand a fun 1,500 word entry into a 5,000 word bore.

FS

Your Guide Entry has just been picked from Peer Review by one of our Scouts, and is now heading off into the Editorial Process, which ends with publication in the Edited Guide. We've moved this Review Conversation out of Peer Review and to the entry itself.

If you'd like to know what happens now, check out the page on 'What Happens after your Entry has been Recommended?' at EditedGuide-Process. We hope this explains everything.

Thanks for contributing to the Edited Guide!