On 9/10/2016 12:40 PM, Henry Spencer wrote:
On Sat, 10 Sep 2016, John Schilling wrote:Be fair, I did say "counted with *an* eyewitness". The buddy system has also been repeatedly verified in practice.
Lesson hopefully learned: Do a sponge count, already. If your techs need to use "rags" on flight hardware, a tray with Exactly N Standard Rags goes inside the cordon, and when you're done a tray with Exactly N Standard Rags (unfolded, so you can see nobody tore off a corner to use in a tight spot) comes out. Counted with an eyewitness.
While checking such things is a good idea -- as witness "sponge count", surgical teams have learned to count things like sponges and retractors before sewing up the patient -- when you start insisting on eyewitnesses and other forms of double-checking, you may be going too far. You can quickly end up with wrenches going for SRB rides because although three signatures said they were all accounted for, nobody actually looked.
Having five proofreaders is *less* effective, not more, than having one. This has been repeatedly verified by experiment. :-)
(Better than counting sponges, actually, is to have a sponge tray -- in a contrasting color -- with a pocket for each one. You can tell at a glance whether there's a sponge in every pocket.)For things that fit in pockets or bins, yes, that's good practice.
