A few weeks ago, in order to get my family updated regarding Star Wars background details, we went through the original trilogy via Netflix.
And after watching all the classic sequences, I started to think about the lessons in Process Automation that can be extracted from the original trilogy.
No, really, I’m not under the influence of early Christmas beverages, wait and keep reading:
1.- Avoid single points of failure:
Both the Empire and the Rebel Alliance have the same disdain for safety regarding single points of failure.
You can blow the first Death Star with a single proton torpedo, if correctly aimed at the thermal exhaust port. That is what I call a single point of failure!
The Empire is able to neutralize the Rebel Alliance base at Hoth with a couple of laser shots, blowing the shield generators, which evidently didn’t have a backup.
The second Death Star’s shield generator was located on the moon of Endor. Although the second Death Star was bigger than the first, it depended on a poorly protected ground facility. Which in fact was destroyed by some rebel commandos plus a whole tribe of cute teddy bears a.k.a. Ewoks.
The shield generator of a Super Star Destroyer had no backup, so a single kamikaze A-Wing can eliminate this capital ship.
That equals 3 to 1. Rebels seem to have better safety policies than the Empire.
2.- Use redundancy for critical systems:
This issue is related to the previous one:
If the rebel base at Hoth had backup generators, or maybe an UPS, the rebels would have hold up against the Empire’s AT-ATs a longer time and made a less desperate escape.
The second Death Star was supposed to be fully operational according to the Emperor. Really? It’s safety depended on the integrity of a single shield generator located on Endor’s moon! If the Empire had the whole galaxy resources to build such a thing, why not spending a few million credits on a backup shield generator?
In both cases the end users should have enjoyed great benefits from a redundant power system, whether implemented by load balancing or by a hot stand-by configuration.
3.- Take special care on access to manual overrides.
Manual overrides sometimes can be useful (remember Three Mile Island?), but you have to be extremely careful on how accessible they are. Otherwise you can have an old Jedi fiddling with your system’s integrity. Obi-Wan just needed to pull up and down a couple of levers in order to execute manual override of the whole Death Star tractor beam subsystem.
4.- Distribute the risk:
Same case as before, there should not be a chance that a single operator could shut down a whole subsystem of your plant without supervision.
5.- Consider the issue of cybersecurity:
The Empire’s IT department really needs a lesson or two on industrial firewall technology. Their system’s security is so bad that a team formed by a smuggler, a farmer, a wookie and two commercially available androids can hack it in order to access the Death Star’s prisoners’ database.
And they seem to be even worse at keeping confidential documentation from the hands of others. Time after time Rebel spies manage to obtain top secret data. Maybe a lesson on encryption software would be useful.
6.- Use standards coherently:
Data access connection points seem to be available everywhere in Star Wars, but they seem to use the same connectors for data and for power, as poor R2-D2 discovers a couple of times. So, take care and identify your cables and there won’t be no risk of confusion.
It could be that the data connection points are also power connection points. So maybe finally fieldbus technology found its place. If that was the reason, then the connector’s pinout was mismatched.
7.- Perform preventive maintenance:
Some routine maintenance on the Millenium Falcon would have avoided Han Solo and friends quite a few problems. And it’s no fun to perform live maintenance work with the process going on.
8.- Use diagnostics tools:
Same case as in point 7, do not rely on a wookie’s tech background. And that lead us to…
9.- If you are going to work with technology, consider some STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) focused education:
Do you think that either the Empire or the Rebel Alliance could have developed all that stuff just by using The Force? They surely needed a whole bunch of engineers…
10.- Enjoy life:
As several other nostalgic parents in their 40’s, I took my children (a girl and a boy, 11 and 7 years old respectively) to watch Star Wars, The Force Awakens.
I’m no movie critic, and I hate reviewers that include spoilers in their reviews. So I’ll just say that we enjoyed the movie, specially my 7 years old kid, he was amazed.
What is left to say is that I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
I really expect that these posts have been useful and enjoyable and I hope to keep on next year.
Thanks to all of you.
Mirko Torrez Contreras is a freelance Process Automation consultant who likes sci-fi. His tastes have been evolving over the years, but he still remembers the thrill of the first time he watched Star Wars at age 10.