Measurement campaigns and return on investment: a job half done is as good as none
I’ve done a fair amount of measurements campaigns in my days and we always had to compromise between cost, time and value. For me, there were hardly ever enough measurement points but we had to be very selective due to the allocated financial and human resources.
As a former ‘academic’, I’ve been accused of ‘not thinking like industry’ or ‘going overboard on the nitty gritty aspects of installing a sensor’. I cannot conceal that I might have been a severe pain in the ass for many people present in those meetings, but it was always with a clear value driven focus. The reason for it is that the value of a campaign in terms of insights, overall learnings and validations does not scale linearly with the use of resources. If you cut too many corners, measurement campaigns fail and the value is zero. Read: you wasted all your money!
On the other hand, small extra efforts like going for the slightly more expensive cable or doing a more rigorous calibration suddenly brings a huge added value as your measurements become more reliable. This story is even more valid if you consider that the extra could possibly eliminate a complete design iteration and all the overhead costs that come with it. So here is a warm appeal to bear the graph underneath in mind. Running the extra mile does help.
