KISS Principle •
Published on December 25, 2018
In 2007 I was working for a precast company, where we had some technical issues within our concrete batching plant. Our company management hired an international expert within this field. At that time, my work included different disciplines where one of them was a quality control engineer for the production, therefore I was lucky to be with that expert to check the issue and resolve it. After having a few questions with the factory manager and his production team, and having a visual inspection, we went together to the office to discuss the solution. Directly, and without any introduction, he looked at me and said, “let’s use the KISS principle!” I was shocked! What is this guy saying? Should he kiss the batching plant! Or should someone kiss his wife before leaving home! A lot of stupid thoughts came to my mind within a moment, but since he was an expert, he knew what was going in my mind, because I was not the first one for him. He laughed and told me, “the principle is Keep It Simple Stupid KISS Principle!”. Even he explained, but it took me a few seconds to connect both phrases. He explained to me the meaning of this principle which is simply “go back to the root cause of any problem, and don’t fall within your current observations” as a lot of issues are resolved through simple procedures which are related not the final issue, but due to some initial steps which resulted the final issue. Before his coming, all our concentration was on the batching plant mechanism and operation, but later one, it was found that the concrete mix was the problem which caused some issues for the batching plant. When he studied the concrete mix, and compared with available results, he could revise the mix, and then this issue was resolved simply without going through any mechanics or high costs as it was expected earlier.