MRO Today - Maintenance and Moore's Law

A mandate to improve

by Tom Hammel

Researching this issue’s stories on technology in maintenance reacquainted me with Moore’s Law. Named for Gordon E. Moore, who co-founded Intel, the law is based on a paper Moore wrote way, way back in 1965 that says basically this: The number of transistors on integrated circuits (a measure of computer processing power) will double every 24 months. Moore’s Law explains why the new PC you bought last month is now obsolete.

In a textbook example of self-fulfilling prophesy, Moore’s “Law” came to be seen as a timetable for computing progress, and the industry has marched in step with that pace ever since.

But nothing lasts forever. Just as he foretold a doubling of computing power every two years, Moore also saw a time when the computer programs would no longer be able to keep pace with their hardware. Thus, Moore’s second law, the concept of the software gap, or the digital divide, was born along- side the first; and the race has been on ever since.

For years now experts have been claiming we are at or near the critical mass of this second law, where software programmers can’t write code fast enough to sustain the relentless hardware growth. As proof, they point to the successive release delays for Microsoft’s Vista operating system – which contains roughly 50 million lines of code, 10 million more than Windows XP.

The same emerging gap can be seen in the condition monitoring universe; the hardware exists in one form or another to collect every conceivable type of conditional and operational information for virtually any piece of industrial equipment. What is lagging is the software to fully integrate all this data into interfaces people can access, manipulate and understand, from anywhere at anytime. CMMS, EAM, ERP and related software systems continue to evolve and will continue to do so to close the gap.

Lagging further is the human element; the knowledge and training to interpret, comprehend, analyze, test, verify and act upon this information – to actually use these tools to their fullest capability. This is a truly two-edged sword: We all love the newest, fastest, shiniest gadget, but once we get it we often only use a small fraction of its capabilities.

All of which ultimately begs the question: do I really need an extra 10 million lines of code? The same goes for your current software; don’t go shopping for this week’s model until you are certain you have exhausted your “old” system’s capabilities. You may find the old grey mare has more kicks in her than you thought. The race is on to build the penultimate all-seeing, all-telling seamless interface, and Version 2.5 will be out next week; just look before you leap.