When designing for interconnection take a little time to consider field repairs and ease of identifying cables.
Remembering repairs are very costly as you have to spend time doing work you’re not getting paid for! So with this in mind it would be worth spending a little time making repairs quicker if there anything that could be done at the design stage to enable the quickest and easiest repair?
Yes there is and it’s simple. Here’s an example, Say you have two similar Multicore cables why not try using LIYcY for one and Def-Std for the other? Both come in Grey & Black with different non repeated colour cores. These different coloured cores make identification that little simpler.
Be brave and be bold!
Another great tip is to think about using more colours. Again with so much choice don’t just stick to standard grey & black use your imagination the more colours you use the easier it is to quickly identify cables.
Another added benefit is a great looking product looks even better using modern colours so don’t be afraid to go for it and use your imagination. Famous designcritic Don Norman tells us about how things look can make us happy, I have seen deals go through just because the product looked good not because it was technically better!
For any sceptics out there just think about how many PC’s with transparent cases and multi coloured cables are inside them!
Again there is often no practical benefit of this but you know what they just look great! So why not give a little more thought to how things look inside as well as on the outside and remember this could in the long term save you money too!
