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Following the code of ethics for engineers
Following the code of ethics for engineers
Ethics an engineer should practice during their career : prohibitive, preventive, and ethical standards
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Recommended: Following the code of ethics for engineers
Ethical Issues in Design There are many obstacles to coming up with a good design for engineers. Taking an ethical approach, one should be able to assume that the design they asked for was given due diligence and put together by a team of professional engineers who live by the Code of Ethics for their professional organization. One main item that could affect design is the concept of liability. In today’s day and age, organizations are quick to lay blame on an individual instead of looking at process improvement. For example, a manufacturing organization that identifies how to improve processes to avoid/correct seeing defects would strengthen the loyalty of its workers vs. one that identifies individuals to blame. Most new design is reviewed …show more content…
In his paper “Columbia and Challenger: Organizational Failure at NASA,” Joseph Lorenzo Hall cites two issues common to both accidents: “Normalization of Deviance,” and influences of hierarchy (Hall, 2003). Normalization of Deviance is a way of describing that deviant actions are accepted as norm, for example the foam falling from the booster vehicle and striking the space shuttle during launch. There are many documented cases of the protective foam striking the shuttle and leaving holes in the structure of the craft that did not cause a catastrophic failure of the mission. NASA does not appear to have any sort of process improvement program that calls for rectifying items that the untrained eye would identify as a serious issue. Identifying a more effective way to secure the foam pieces to the launch vehicle, or calling for an inspection of the shuttle after making orbit and providing adequate equipment and materials to make a repair would be an easy way to resolve the falling foam …show more content…
In both cases, it was an acceptable business risk to proceed at caution by upper management. So the engineers and managers in lower positions took that as law (with a few objectors). These objectors later gained fame due to the catastrophes. Upper management has taken on a mindset of wanting to see proof of failure. When the engineers could not come up with proof, their concerns were dismissed as not creditable. Perhaps a program that allows workers to protest and not work in a chilled work environment would have given those engineers the voice they needed to cause NASA to take a second look at both shuttles prior to launch. The blame for both accidents lies with NASA culture. NASA does not give enough credit to the concerns of more junior engineers, and they continue to allow a chilled work environment to exist since no one stands up to the unreasonable demands of politicians or upper management. NASA also needs to take a serious objective look at what it considers “normal and acceptable,” and improve those questionable items (e.g. conducting the launch on a cold
Even though the Federal government did not require Boeing to admit any wrongdoing with the settlement of these issues, major damage had already been done to Boeing’s reputation. To gain back trust, Boeing must be extremely careful with their business decisions moving forward. Boeing must be weary of who they hire to represent their company, and deeply consider the choice to hire employees from competing companies. Boeing should also be careful in how they handle their business in future crises.
Lack of proper risk management process: NASA was using a simple risk classification system and the methods used were only qualitative. There was a lack of proper technical and quantitative risk management methods that could have helped them identify the risks and eliminate them.
A good design begins with a creation or plan for the making of an object or service. It is a strategic approach towards a person’s (usually a client or target audience) required unique expectations. A design generally defines the specifications and parameters in achieving its main objectives. Often there are no key attributes as to what would make a design successful and interesting. Products and peoples needs and wants or taste often change and revolve around time. This brings a definite change in the market and its emerging’s trends. This cycle of evolution will always exist, but finally it is the factor of emotional response with the customer that will determine whether a product is successful or not. Whether the design is an object or it is a concept, the design that we see is an accumulation of various concepts and decisions that have been brought together from a variety of disciplines. In order for a consumer to view the design as something that is good it takes a unique combination of aesthetics, quality and ergonomics to make a design successful. Often we recognize a bad design at its first glance and a bad design often forces one to take in many confusing and conflicted content. So what makes our design/ product fail?
The Challenger disaster of 1986 was a shock felt around the country. During liftoff, the shuttle exploded, creating a fireball in the sky. The seven astronauts on board were killed and the shuttle was obliterated. Immediately after the catastrophe, blame was spread to various people who were in charge of creating the shuttle and the parts of the shuttle itself. The Presidential Commission was decisive in blaming the disaster on a faulty O-ring, used to connect the pieces of the craft. On the other hand, Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, in The Golem at Large, believe that blame cannot be isolated to any person or reason of failure. The authors prove that there are too many factors to decide concretely as to why the Challenger exploded. Collins and Pinch do believe that it was the organizational culture of NASA and Morton Thiokol that allowed the disaster. While NASA and Thiokol were deciding whether to launch, there was not a concrete reason to postpone the mission.
One of the greatest tragedies in history occurred on January 8, 1986. Shortly after it was launched, the space shuttle Challenger exploded, killing seven astronauts, including Christa McAuliffe, a New Hampshire schoolteacher chosen to be the first teacher in space (“Challenger Disaster, n.d.). The explosion was caused by a failure of the O-rings of the solid rocket boosters. The O-rings were unable to seat properly, causing the leaking of hot combustion gases, which burnt through the external fuel tank. The malfunction was not any one person’s or organization’s fault; it was caused by many factors including the decision to launch despite the cold weather, the poor communication between management levels of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the readiness of NASA management to launch the shuttlecraft (“Engineering Ethics,” n.d.).
Rodney Rocha is a NASA engineer and co-chair of Debris Assessment Team (DTS). When possibility of wing damage appeared he requested an additional imagery to obtain more information in order to evaluate the damage. This demonstrates that he actually tried to resolve the issue. However, due to absence of clear organizational responsibilities in NASA those images were never received. Since foam issue was there for years and risk for the flights was estimated as low management decided not to proceed with this request. After learning of management decision Rocha wrote an e-mail there he stated that foam damage could carry grave hazard and have to be addressed. At the same time this e-mail was not send to the management team. Organizational culture at NASA could be described as highly bureaucratic with operations under standard procedures only. Low-end employees like Rocha are afraid to bring any safety-related issues to the management due to delay of the mission. They can be punished for bringing “bad news”. This type of relationship makes it impossible for two-way communication between engineers and managers, which are crucial for decision-making in complex env...
Two tragic incidents, the Challenger Space Shuttle crash of 1986, and the Three Mile Island near meltdown of 1979, have greatly devastated our nation. Both these disasters involved failures of communication among ordinary professional people, working in largely bureaucratic companies. Two memos called the “Smoking Gun Memos,” authored by R. M. Boisjoly, of Morton Thiokol, and D. F. Hallman, of Babcook and Wilcox, will always be associated these two incidents. Unfortunately, neither of these memos were successful in preventing the accidents of the Challenger and the Three Mile Island near meltdown.
Renowned physicist Richard Feynman, who was a member of the Rogers Commission, concluded that “Engineers and managers are not communicating effectively”. (Challenger) Indeed, this occurred throughout the year that Boisjoly spent trying to warn management about the O-rings, and occurred again during the conference call where very likely engineers were not vocal enough in their reservations concerning the defective O-ring design. Although the documentary seems to portray Boisjoly as a lone crusader who is ignored by everyone around him, Jud Luvgood, the head engineer of NASA’s rocket propulsion program, had a different perspective on the incident. He says: “When you’re in a meeting like that, and the question is posed if anybody disagrees with the decision to launch and nobody disagrees, then that means that everybody agrees.” He adds, “I don’t care what they say today, and what they’ve been saying the last 20 years, they agreed to launch”. (Challenger) Indeed, there was likely a failure to communicate between NASA and Morton-Thiakol that led to the disaster. Of course, there is plenty of blame to go all around regarding the accident as a whole. Regarding specifically the decision to launch, Morton-Thiakol made a big mistake by trying to stop the launch literally just twelve hours before its scheduled time. Any concerns should have been brought up sooner, which would have allowed more
Consider the following scenario; Billy works in the IT department for Cadmus Labs, a genetic research laboratory in Washington, DC. Billy was the best in the field and was soon asked to assist on a top secret project called Project 13. He immediately accepted the promotion and felt honored to be given such an amazing opportunity. However, within a month of working on the project, Billy discovered that the project’s goal was to create a super weapon as a duplicate and closest genetic equivalent of Superman in an effort to destroy Superman. Billy was outraged and refused to continue work on the project. He then went on to report the information that he gathered to the government so the project could be stopped. Was Billy ethical in his actions?
Vaughan (1996) argues that organizational culture and the pressure of shuttle launch at NASA and Morton Thiokol leaded this disaster. It indicates the deviations of the launching of the shuttle were normalized, resulting the managers did not report that important information to their top manager. Also, the managers at Morton Thiokol wanted to compete with their rivals. Thus the engineers remained those faulty designs to launch the shuttle, under the pressure of “change is bad” organizational culture. By analyzing this corporate culture, Vaughan’s explanation suggests different management levels have responsibilities for this accident. The Challenger accident was inevitable due to the culture of “change is bad” was ingrained in the human resources management in
At 9 a.m. on February 1st, 2003, disaster struck the space shuttle program: Columbia had disintegrated upon re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere just 16 minutes before it was supposed to land at Kennedy Space Center (National Geographic News par 2-3). The shuttle had been damaged by little more than foam from the external tank but it was enough to make it susceptible to the high temperatures it faced as it descended through the atmosphere. The idea that a space shuttle can endure damage that is unforeseen or unavoidable is well within reason. However, in retrospect it was found that foam strikes were present on most shuttle missions and NASA had a history of diminishing their recognized danger in favor of increasing the chances of meeting mission deadlines. Columbia and its crew of seven astronauts were doomed from launch due to a combination of the damage it sustained and the unwillingness of program managers to allow anyone to investigate it further during the mission. The Columbia disaster should spur NASA to reevaluate their policies in order to pay closer attention to matters of safety in their space programs.
...easier to blame the O-rings than to blame people for the disaster. There was a lack of communication and a sense of desperation from the managers to make sure the shuttle launched as they did not want any further delays. The challenger disaster was certainly avoidable, the warning signs were there but the people in charge did not heed them. Thiokol had an opportunity to steer clear of disaster during the meeting with (GDSS) before the launching of challenger. If the pressure to launch in combination with communication breakdowns had not occurred or had been managed better this disaster would not have happened. It seems that leadership was more concerned with public relations instead of being concerned with the problem of the O-ring. So, I believe that bad decision making on launching the Space Shuttle Challenger on the day of January 28 caused by human error.
The presidential commission examining the Challenger mishap put a decent part of the fault on defective administration rehearses at the space organization. Key data was not being identified with top administration, for example, the developing worry about the O-rings. It additionally blamed NASA for withholding data from the general
In order to better understand the context of the paper, it would be beneficial to read “Design for the Real World” by Victor Papanek, furthermore, that lack of socially responsible design awareness at academic institutions is of great concern, in order to support the social design awareness, more research into where and how social design is taught, would add additional value to the claims in this review.
The law or rules make our society being safety and well. However, this kind of system follows behind real terrible situations happened some times. Before passing the law by a legislative organization or being plans by government, our society asks professionals and engineers doing in justice and right way. For this reason, they have to be respectful for human and not being negligent for their duty. As an engineer, workplace ethics should be common code of conduct. This brings our society to ethical culture and this mode makes us choose the right things to do in easy way.