Setting the Standard

by Evan Caille, President of PTC/USER 

“The beauty of standards is there are so many to choose from, you can just pick the one you like.” How many times have you heard someone say this—only partly in jest? 

As engineers, we benefit from standards that ensure part commonality and help us meet safety, environmental, and ergonomic regulations. For example, fastener standards make it easier to specify parts and have confidence that any manufacturer meeting those standards will produce something that conforms to our needs. 

As a case of standards being used to improve the health and safety of people, take the development of boiler standards by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1914–15. During the prior 35 years, over 10,000 boiler explosions were recorded—many resulting in loss of life. The boiler standard was a voluntary guideline that many state and foreign governments adopted and incorporated it into law. (See http://anniversary.asme.org/history.shtml for more details.) 

On the other hand, standards can be a detriment if they are issued before a specific technology matures. The effect can be unrealistic constraints that inhibit innovation or widespread adoption by the marketplace. We see instances throughout history where innovative approaches supplanted the so-called standard at the time. This is often because the new approach is a simpler and less costly solution that leads to widespread adoption—eventually becoming the de-facto standard. The success of TCP/IP as a network protocol is a clear example of this. 

Another interesting example involves railway track gauges. One would think that a single-track gauge would be used to enable the free flow of goods across the rail network. In actuality, early railroad companies adopted one of several rail gauges for various economic and practical reasons. This meant that goods often had to be offloaded from one railcar onto another in order to traverse the US. It wasn’t until after the 1860s that there was a common gauge across the Northern and Southern states. This brings to mind the efforts we sometimes go through to exchange data between two different CAD systems. 

It can also take years for everyone to adopt a particular standard. Time zones are a case in point. Before they existed, each community adjusted its clock to solar time. This is a classic case of everyone setting their own “standard.” This meant the people living in the same community could agree on the exact time. But if you visited a neighboring community, your watch could be off by several minutes or more. Because of the distances involved, train travel exacerbated the problem. As trains moved between terminuses, they would either be running ahead of or behind time depending on whether they were going east or west. This made it very difficult to schedule arrivals and departures. To remedy the situation, the railroads adopted standard time by dividing the US into four zones so that clocks could be synchronized across the country and timetables would be accurate. It should be noted that the railroad companies adopted standard time several years before the general population did so. (For more info, see http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/d.html.)

What does all this have to do with PTC/USER? As users, we are often looking for the best, or standard, practice when it comes to using PTC tools. I firmly believe a healthy dialog within the PTC/USER community can help us assess these practices. And I believe evolution and variety are key watchwords. As technology evolves, these practices must also adapt to the changing environment. In addition, each company must consider the pros and cons of each best practice, adopting those that apply and avoiding those that hinder.

It is safe to say that across industries, there is a wide range of suitable best practices. So I encourage everyone to share their experience with fellow users, whether on the PTC/USER mail exploder or at our conferences. One forum that we found to be particularly effective at the 2005 World Event in Orlando was a panel session devoted to companies’ experiences of adopting Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire. Audience members were able to ask numerous questions about how they might achieve the same success at their own companies. Out of this followup Q&A session came numerous tips on how to conduct user training and how to configure the system environment. As attendees have attested, the value of this information exchange was immense.

As the new year begins, we at PTC/USER reaffirm our commitment to setting the standard for providing valuable information, sharing opportunities with our membership, and serving as the voice of the customer to PTC.

Evan Caille works at HP in Houston, TX. He can be reached via e-mail at evan@ptcuser.org.