Modular design [From the Editor´s Bench]

For many years now, there has been a move toward modular design. Modular equipment is often cheaper to maintain. If you need to only test ten modules to determine why a piece of equipment is not working, you can save a lot of money on fault analysis. If repairing the piece of equipment means throwing out the bad module and slotting in its replacement, you can save a lot of money on repairs too. Though you may decry the waste of all the good parts still left in the broken module, you are likely to feel that overall modularity has served you well.