“Gremlins today” is a series of short articles on problems that plague industrial operations the world over.
Originally, Gremlins were fictitious mischievous trouble makers who caused Royal Air Force aircraft breakdowns during World War II. Author Roald Dahl published a book about them in 1943, based on his own experience as an RAF pilot. Pilots in the RAF used to carry lucky Gremlins to ward off their effects. Dahl worked with Disney to publish a cartoon book based on them, but it never made it into a movie at the time. Never-the-less, it did loosely inspire the 1984 movie, “Gremlins,” by Steven Spielberg.
Despite their mythical nature, Gremlins still make frequent appearances in today’s industrial environments. Like many old myths, tales and beliefs, scientific advances have explained them. Today we actually know the causes for many of these old Gremlins. Certainly, we know much more than they did back in the 1940’s. We can actually deal with them much better and minimize their effects.
This is the first of a series of articles, each dedicated to a single Gremlin to help you understand them and what you can do to deal with them in your operational environment. To start off, here are a few of them.
These, and more, will be explained, in following articles.
