Do you know this Aesop’s Fable about the golden goose?
This fable is the story of a poor farmer who one day discovers in the nest of his pet goose a glittering golden egg. At first, he thinks it must be some kind of trick. But as he starts to throw the egg aside, he has second thought and take it in to be appraised instead.
The egg is pure gold! The farmer can’t believe his good fortune’ He becomes even more incredulous the following day when the experience is repeated. Day after day, he awakens to rush to the nest and find another golden egg. He becomes fabulously wealthy; it all seems too good to be true.
But with increased wealth comes greed and impatience. Unable to wait day after day for the golden eggs, the farmer decides he will kill the goose and get them all at once. But when he opens the goose, he finds it empty. There are no golden eggs- and now, there is no way to get any more. The farmer has destroyed the goose that produced them.
The same thing happens every day in your life:
The golden goose is the production tool, the golden egg is the result
If you focus only on results, you may get some golden eggs, but if you don’t maintain your production tool, it will break and it will take some time to recover.
If you focus only on the goose (the production tool), the goose will become fat and lazy and will stop to produce the expected quality (golden eggs).
So to be efficient, you must “focus on the golden eggs” by “maintaining the goose”…
FEA Software is your golden goose
You can think about an engineer who is performing FEA every day. If he uses a software that was good 10 years ago, he may have produced some golden eggs in the past and the company was happy. But a software that was good 10 years ago may become rusty if the tool has not been improved or maintained adequately… operations that were easy 10 years ago may have become time consuming and difficult operations in comparison with the newest technologies that have been invented since.
It demonstrates a very simple reality, an effective engineer with an old tool/software cannot be as effective as before !
But in order to change that, the farmer has to see the importance both of the golden eggs AND the goose, which means that the engineer (and his manager) has(ve) to understand that an old FEA Software will decrease a lot the effectivity.
If this can help them to understand, just forward this article to your team workers and manager, I am sure they will be thankful to you!
I thought it would be useful to share this story with you, the reader of my blog and I have the duty to give you the best insights not only about FEA, but also about effectiveness and life!
If you have similar stories to share, write it in the comments, so everyone will know how you are producing golden eggs and maintaining the goose :)
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Sir i am mechanical engineering student i learned some cad software like creo,nx and catia but my sole interest in cae. i dont know anything about fea but i m good at engineering subject. So how should i start learning cae?