Troubleshooting in the Commercial Computer Industry: A Success Story

Abstract

There are certainly extremes of “success” and “failure” in the troubleshooting domain. Some of the most spectacular failures occur in the military setting. A good example was the Mayaguez affair in 1975, which followed the Vietnam war, and was America’s most recent combat activity. Some months after that incident, Secretary of Defense Schlesinger admitted that:

“... The thirty-one-year-old carrier Hancock ... operating without one of its four shafts ... never reached the scene. The helicopter carrier Okinawa, ... with part of its boiler plant off the line ... also never arrived at the scene. The escort vessel Holt, the first ship at the scene, had power-supply problems, and consequently its main battery was down the night before the engagement.”