Four Common Mistakes New Entrepreneurs Make

 

Nearly every entrepreneur has made mistakes at some point during their careers. Here are a few common mistakes that new entrepreneurs make that are best avoided:

Spending too much or not spending enough

When it comes to making money as an entrepreneur, there are two basic mindsets: spending the bare minimum and spending money to make money. While neither attitude is inherently wrong, taking them to the extreme can be detrimental to entrepreneurial success. The key is judgment. Spend little when it is for internal items that have less impact on operations. Spend more when warranted by an opportunity or tremendous process improvement.

Trying to do it all alone

Entrepreneurs have to wear multiple hats from time to time, but this doesn’t mean they must multitask to become successful. In fact, multitasking reduces effectiveness, so it’s best to hire different professionals to take on different tasks. These can include web developers and bookkeepers. The key is to know your strengths and when you are being spread too thin to deliver the best results. If the task requires large blocks of dedicated focused time or must be re-visited very frequently in a day to accomplish acceptable results, it is likely better to hire someone else to produce this success so you can focus on the larger strategic goals, business development, and delivery optimization.

Ignoring marketing

Many new entrepreneurs have the idea that the customers will come if they simply provide a product or service. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Marketing is still necessary to introduce customers to a product, especially if it’s revolutionary and has not been introduced to the market previously. The key is to understand what you are selling and who needs or wants the product or service. And if you are not sure, start a focus group to better identify. Re-evaluate your marketing strategy frequently during the startup and growth phases of your company.

Not saving enough

Time, effort, and money are all essential for starting a successful business. Yet many new entrepreneurs fail to save enough money to sustain their companies. Having a good nest egg not only ensures business operations continue, it also helps entrepreneurs focus on their businesses without the stress of having second jobs. The key is to realize that you may need to float a loan or make a “cash call” to help your business in times of slow business or additional unexpected expenses. Maintaining good cash flow in the business will help mitigate such situations, but having good personal liquidity and a strong credit rating is very helpful as well.

About the Author:

The president and chief officer of PHM Design, LLC, Carl Byington is a professional engineer with successful businesses in NY, PA, and GA. He and his team provide engineering consulting services towards the design of prognostics and health management (PHM) systems. Possessing over three decades of experience in his expertise areas, Carl Byington has demonstrated his unique ability to balance success in both technical achievements and entrepreneurial pursuits.

 

 

Advanced Wind Turbine Health Management

 

Experienced entrepreneur and engineer Carl Byington worked for Impact Technologies, Sikorsky Aircraft, and Lockheed Martin for many of his professional years. In these roles, Carl Byington became an expert in prognostics and health management (PHM) technologies and next-generation condition-based maintenance plus (CBM+) solutions. He currently consults in these technical areas at his PHM Design company, located in the Atlanta, GA area.

 

Rotorcraft and wind turbines are both susceptible to critical drive train failure modes involving bearings and gears. The helicopter community has developed sophisticated health and usage monitoring systems (HUMS) to track damage accumulation on critical components and detect incipient faults. Health and usage monitoring systems typically consist of a variety of onboard sensors, data acquisition systems, and signal processing and analysis algorithms.  The acquired data may be processed onboard the rotorcraft or on a ground station (or a combination of both) providing the means to measure against defined criteria and generate instructions for the maintenance staff and/or flight crew for intervention. Application of HUMS technology to wind turbine drive trains has the potential to significantly reduce maintenance costs and increase turbine availability by enabling condition-based maintenance (CBM).

 

The wind turbine industry has experienced an array of drivetrain failures including spalled bearings and fractured gear teeth. Some of these failure modes are largely attributable to unexpected and/or excessive loading conditions. Such drivetrain failures often entail expensive repairs and can have catastrophic consequences for the turbine. The helicopter community faces many of the same challenges from uncertain loads and dire consequences associated with drivetrain failures. Thee helicopter community addressed these risks through the use of drivetrain health and usage monitoring systems (HUMS). Such HUMS oil debris and advanced gear/bearing vibration technologies can be used to help the wind turbine industry.

 

Information from HUMS enables implementation of a new maintenance paradigm that can improve reliability, availability, and maintainability of wind turbines while simultaneously reducing maintenance costs. Under the simplest maintenance paradigm, reactive maintenance, equipment is allowed to run until it fails without maintenance intervention. Reactive maintenance yields low reliability and high costs due to missed opportunities to detect and repair faults, secondary damage (progression of failure to a severe state), large logistics footprint (parts and labor) to cope with unexpected failures, and lost production while equipment awaits repair.

 

Preventive maintenance can improve equipment reliability (number of failures) by periodically overhauling equipment before it wears out. To avoid unexpected failures in equipment that has an uncertain service life, preventive maintenance must be performed well in advance of the mean time to failure. Consequently, preventive maintenance achieves high reliability at the cost of performing premature maintenance which includes frequent interruption of production for planned maintenance, high labor costs, and high parts usage.

 

Condition-based maintenance (CBM), on the other hand, enables high equipment reliability and low maintenance costs by eliminating the need for unnecessary overhaul activities while simultaneously allowing repairs to be performed on a planned basis. Condition monitoring provides insight into the “health” of individual pieces of equipment so that maintenance decisions can be made on a case-by-case basis rather than on fleet wide averages. Detection of faults in their early stages provides an opportunity to order parts, schedule personnel, shutdown the equipment before serious damage occurs, and minimize the disruption of production. Furthermore, insight gained from equipment condition monitoring reduces uncertainty regarding the “health” of critical internal drivetrain components and therefore eliminates the need for preventive maintenance. In other words, maintenance is performed only when necessary. 

The value proposition for wind turbines and specific technologies involved is summarized in a paper by Carl Byington, et al. It is available for download here:

 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253354657_Advanced_Vibration_Monitoring_for_Wind_Turbine_Health_Management

 

Carl Byington may be contacted for specific consulting engagements at:

https://phmdesign.com/contact-us/