The engine on a new commercial trawler was vibrating excessively at high speeds, limiting the ship's ability to move quickly from one tuna fishing site to the next. SixD engineers took operating data,  constructed operating shapes of the engine, performed modal testing, and ran sea trials as part of a logical problem-solving methodology.

Data pointed toward an imbalance in the engine despite its being new and despite the customer's certainty that the balance had been checked and documented when the engine was installed. In fact, the customer's certainty was one of the biggest obstacles to his identifying the problem. Troubleshooting assumptions proved to be as important as analyzing physical phenomena. When the crank shaft was compared to its mechanical drawings, it was discovered that alignment holes on the crank itself had been drilled in the wrong locations, and the shaft was 30° out of alignment, a problem that was relatively easy to rectify once identified.