About 4-R-Forum
I am just a humble mechanical engineer, read my profile at LinkedIn.
As an engineer I want to share insight with young people, so that they can experience the excitement that being able to make things work can bring. STEM programs, science, technology, engineering and math, prepares people to solve the increasingly inter-connected problems the world faces now, and in the future.
Engineers use ingenuity to make things work, it’s where the word comes from. Many people think that you are either smart or you are not, but smart is what you do, not who you are. Ingenuity is a skill, which means that it can be learned, and it gets better with practice. And groups of people can achieve much more than individuals.
Engineering as a skill has at its core a feedback loop, that is what the 4-Rs are about, but fewer syllables might be easier for young people to grasp. 4-R-STEM Uses Professor Deming’s Plan-Do-Check-Act process for the feedback loop. It will prepare aspiring engineers for more complex projects with larger teams.
4-R-Forum demonstrates the PDCA process, with examples of its application to STEM projects.
Professional engineers have used the feedback loop since Imhotep built the Stepped Pyramid. It was a prototype for the Great Pyramid, which was the tallest man-made structure on Earth until the Eiffel tower was built. Today we have much better tools, and timescales are continuously shrinking. Organizations like INCOSE and NIST lead the way in promoting economies of skill in engineering practice. Using PDCA and RRRR will prepare young engineers for them.
Let me know what you think.