Failure Investigator Mentors Needed
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EDITORIAL
Failure Investigator Mentors Needed Daniel J. Benac
Published online: 8 December 2012 Ó ASM International 2012
There is a need to mentor young, inexperienced engineers who want to become failure analysts or investigators. Those making a career change or new college graduates beginning their careers in failure analysis and investigation are eager and educated, yet they often lack the experience to know how to think critically, how to perform certain investigative tasks, how to interpret failure features, and how to communicate effectively. They may get on-the-job training—but without an experienced mentor, the eager engineer may end up frantically swimming to avoid sinking. Without a mentor, he or she may even drown in the process of learning or become worn out and give up—or even as devastating become a poor investigator. What is mentoring? Our English word ‘‘mentor’’ comes from Greek mythology—Me´nto¯r was a trusted advisor and teacher of the son of Odysseus. A mentor is now defined as ‘‘someone who imparts wisdom to and shares knowledge
D. J. Benac (&) Baker Engineering and Risk Consultants, Inc. (BakerRisk), 3330 Oakwell Court, Suite 100, San Antonio, TX 78218, USA e-mail: [email protected]
with a less experienced colleague.’’ To mentor someone means imparting your knowledge so that they can benefit from your experience. An experienced and competent failure analyst and investigator can mentor inexperienced investigators to help them become good failure analysts and investigators. Those of us who have had long, broad, and successful careers can reflect back and be thankful and appreciative to those who took the time and had the patience to mentor us. Now we can look to the future and put into practice what others have done for us, by taking the time to mentor someone else. What should an experienced investigator pass on to the new investigator? I propose the following four lessons that an experienced failure investigator mentor can model and teach: (1) How to perform tasks proficiently, (2) How to think critically and scientifically, (3) How to interpret physical features correctly, and (4) How to communicate effectively.
Lesson 1: How to Perform Tasks Proficiently Investigators need to learn how to conduct an investigation. For example, how does a metallographer learn the art of polishing soft coppers or thermally sprayed parts? Yes, there are manuals and procedures that can be read, but the skill and art comes from being shown how to do it—where to section a sample—what to cut with—how fast to cut—to use or not use cutting fluid—what grit of paper to use and for how long to polish? The metallographer learns the art through someone teaching him how to do it. Failure investigators need to be shown how to observe physical
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evidence, how to take pictures, how to operate equipment, how to document features, and finally how to write reports that communicate their findings. Then, they can gather the important facts to know what happened.
Lesson 2: How to Think Critically and Scientifically I
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