Principle
9. Prior Counteraction
a. If it is necessary to carry out some action, consider a
counter-action in
advance
b. If by the problem statement an object has to have a tension, provide anti-tension
in advance
- Principle Description: Understand what might go wrong in advance and take action to eliminate, reduce, or prevent its occurrence.
- Hints on Usage: This principle is used to eliminate, reduce or prevent future occurrences of undesirable functions, events or conditions. For example, even when there is a process to perform useful functions, realize useful events, or create useful conditions, upon achievement of the desired results.
- The key is to understanding what might go wrong in advance is to model potential failure modes. These can include: review known failures; intentionally invent new failures by looking for weak points in a system; identify potentially dangerous conditions; assess devices, components and mechanisms for potential failure modes; assess how nature or human interaction (resulting from change, stress, interruptions, crisis, boredom, etc.) might cause failure modes; and consider how different sources of energy (mechanical, thermal, chemical, electrical, magnetic, or electromagnetic) - and their concentration, change, flow, interaction, etc. might affect the system. Once the potential failures have been identified take prior or advance action to eliminate, reduce or prevent the occurrence of the potential failure modes.