Book of the Week: Problem Solving 101

This week’s selection is “Problem Solving 101” by Ken Watanabe.

Why select a book about problem solving? The answer is easy: because 3D printers break. A lot.

When your 3D printer breaks down it’s time for some problem solving. Sometimes problems are obvious, or they’ve ones you’ve encountered previously and already know how to solve them. But often, particularly at the beginning of your 3D print experience, or when you’re using a new machine, you may not know what to do.

One could fumble around and eventually fix the problem, but there are better ways. Over decades different approaches for problem solving have been developed, and they can be quite effective, particularly when the problem is completely unknown.

This book takes you through one of those methods.

It’s a short book that explains the basics of the problem solving workflow, and looks at root causes. Often one fixes the symptoms, but misses the actual cause of the problem. Fix the root problem, and you’ll never see it again.

Watanabe presents a set of tools you can use to solve problems, including a logic tree, design plan, hypothesis pyramid and several more. These can be used to solve a problem in a step-by-step manner.

What’s really important, however, is that this is definitely not a book for solving 3D printer problems. In fact, the word “3D printer” never appears in the book at all.

Instead you will be presented with a method to solve ANY problem. Any problem at all you may encounter in life, and that includes issues with your 3D printer.

But who doesn’t have other problems that need solving as well?

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Via Amazon