Boeing Says Workers Skipped Required Tests on 787 But Recorded Work as Completed (arstechnica.com) 127
An anonymous reader shares a report: The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating whether Boeing failed to complete required inspections on 787 Dreamliner planes and whether Boeing employees falsified aircraft records, the agency said this week. The investigation was launched after an employee reported the problem to Boeing management, and Boeing informed the FAA. "The FAA has opened an investigation into Boeing after the company voluntarily informed us in April that it may not have completed required inspections to confirm adequate bonding and grounding where the wings join the fuselage on certain 787 Dreamliner airplanes," the FAA said in a statement provided to Ars today. The FAA said it "is investigating whether Boeing completed the inspections and whether company employees may have falsified aircraft records. At the same time, Boeing is reinspecting all 787 airplanes still within the production system and must also create a plan to address the in-service fleet." The agency added that it "will take any necessary action -- as always -- to ensure the safety of the flying public."
Boeing VP Scott Stocker, who leads the 787 Dreamliner program, described "misconduct" in an April 29 email to employees in South Carolina. Boeing provided a copy of the email to Ars. "After receiving the report, we quickly reviewed the matter and learned that several people had been violating Company policies by not performing a required test, but recording the work as having been completed," Stocker wrote. "As you all know, we have zero tolerance for not following processes designed to ensure quality and safety. We promptly informed our regulator about what we learned and are taking swift and serious corrective action with multiple teammates."
Boeing VP Scott Stocker, who leads the 787 Dreamliner program, described "misconduct" in an April 29 email to employees in South Carolina. Boeing provided a copy of the email to Ars. "After receiving the report, we quickly reviewed the matter and learned that several people had been violating Company policies by not performing a required test, but recording the work as having been completed," Stocker wrote. "As you all know, we have zero tolerance for not following processes designed to ensure quality and safety. We promptly informed our regulator about what we learned and are taking swift and serious corrective action with multiple teammates."
Comparison (Score:2)
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As you all know, we have zero tolerance for not following processes designed to ensure quality and safety.
should have read:
As you all know, we have zero tolerance for anyone letting themselves get caught not following processes designed to ensure quality and safety.
Please update your notes.
Pencil-whipping. That was *jail* in the military. (Score:5, Insightful)
Pencil-whipping, gun-decking, whatever colorful phrase you wish to use. This is jail, in the military.
This is inexcusable. Yeah I know I'm stating the obvious but pencil-whipping things like checklists can (and has) resulted in dead people.
Boeing truly needs an excorsim. Find the core rot, fire it, change the culture back to what it should've been all along, and then teach it as an example of how the US allowed its most prestigious names to be wrecked by MBA-driven greed and avarice.
There are other problems, sure -- but this one's the worst. The pursuit of Next Quarter's Numbers have completely wrecked ALL our big names. GM, Ford, Boeing, etc etc etc. Some to a much more extreme degree than others.
Re:Pencil-whipping. That was *jail* in the militar (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in the day it was run by engineers, and had many strong ties to the military. The engineers were absolutely strict about adhering to the protocols and the military-related folks reinforced the strict protocols. As you wrote, "pencil-whipping" or falsely recording that procedures were followed, can range from reprimands, to court martial being charged with forgery, reduction in rank, dishonorable discharge, and even confinement.
In "Old Boeing" everything was double-checked and had a paper trail associated. You check out a tool and double-check the serial number. You record the serial number of every part you install with the tool. When you're done you check in the tool and double-check the serial number. Now you have a paper trail showing you didn't leave a wrench inside the wing, and also a record of every part the wrench touched. Between the nerds in engineering and the strict protocols of the military, all the paper trails and quality levels outweighed the costs and burdens of paperwork.
Consolidations in the mid 1990's generally, and the merge with McDonnel Douglas especially, brought an end to that culture. Management transition from people experienced aviation engineers over to people with backgrounds business management and accounting further eroded the culture.
Around that time many analysts and workers complained that everything needed to be cost-justified rather than protocol-justified. Before the transition if a worker spent more time double-checking something or chose to throw out a part because it wasn't up to speck they could justify it based on protocol. After the transition reports are that management switched to demanding cost justification
Now the company's announced the turnover of Calhoun as CEO with his background in investment funds and turning profits, that's a start. They still have C-suite executives with backgrounds in Walmart and Disney, the supply chain is managed by a business admin, a policy director with a background on minimizing political risk exposure rather than engineering safety practices, a tech officer that's been primarily focused on the business portfolio, space and security exec that came from Citigroup, etc., etc.
How much of that's just pencil-whipping reports, how much is an edict to save money, how much is requiring a financial analysis instead of an engineering analysis, that's all changed from the company pre 1990's.
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over to people with backgrounds business management and accounting further eroded the culture.
That seems to be a huge problem in general, not just in aviation.
I wonder what they teach in those MBA courses, because all that managers ever seem to know is cutting costs. No great product in the history of the world ever came to be because someone was cutting costs. Cutting costs is one small part of running a business. It should be the job of controllers - low-level employees with a knack for numbers - and not the #1 objective of managers.
But late-stage capitalism has led us to this point where innovati
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What's the over/under on this employee being found dead in the next couple weeks?
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Put the blame where it belongs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Put the blame where it belongs (Score:4, Insightful)
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The company management is pointing the finger at workers, and they're right to, just as long as they point the finger at themselves too.
These kinds of problems start at the top. If management demands workers do the impossible (or at least the wildly implausible), they know that reports of success are going to be fraudulent. The question is, are they goign to get away with it?
Re:Or is that the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
Whole executive leadership needs canning, now. Then, the people who falsified checklists need firing, removal of their retirement plans and federal charges that stick.
A few people in prison will go a long way to fixing the culture there.
Re: Or is that the problem? (Score:2)
Re:Or is that the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Or is that the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
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This right there. It's a direct result of the "10% more with 10% less" mantra that consultant companies have been beating the drum for, for decades now. The ridiculous notion that it is eternally possible to produce 10% more output with 10% less personnel, every year.
At some point, that idea breaks apart. And the only way that 10% fewer people can produce 10% more output is by cutting corners on something that has already been turned into a circle years ago.
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This right there. It's a direct result of the "10% more with 10% less" mantra that consultant companies have been beating the drum for, for decades now. The ridiculous notion that it is eternally possible to produce 10% more output with 10% less personnel, every year.
“My Hermes got that hell hole running so efficiently that all physical labor is now done by one Australian man!”
Re:Or is that the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent has it exactly right. It's slipshod, cut-corners, profit-at-all-costs mentality. They're doing what all these big companies have been doing, betting on it being someone else's problem when the shit hits the fan because they're "too big to fail."
Quality control is expensive. Designing new aircraft is expensive. Boeing has been trying to go cheap on both because it makes their margins better.
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Nonsense. Boeing's problems have nothing to do with wokeness or whatever right-wing drivel is making the rounds these days.
I don't know about Boeing in particular, but it's definitely a thing in aviation lately.
https://www.washingtontimes.co... [washingtontimes.com]
Parent has it exactly right. It's slipshod, cut-corners, profit-at-all-costs mentality.
So you're saying these tests were skipped as a matter of company policy in order to save money? Because it sounds like the policy required the opposite.
Re:Or is that the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
A policy is moot if your worker cannot follow it.
Given that more and more workers are facing the "more with less" bullshit, more and more of them are facing a dilemma: Follow the policy and get fired for not meeting quotas or tossing policies aside, cutting corners where there can't be any cut and hope for the best, i.e. that nothing bad happens.
Let's compare the options this worker has: Get fired for sure because you can't meet the ridiculous quotas or get fired maybe when the shit hits the fan and the plane comes down to crash and burn.
Most people will choose option two.
And this is why your policies mean jack when you don't give your workers the option to heed them.
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Except that's a reach. It's a 2013 policy being blamed for 2023 faults.
Sounds reasonable, right? Except between those years, a massive layoff of air traffic controllers took place. You might know the year too - it happened in 2020.
Since no one was flying, a bunch of ATC were laid off. And now things have rebounded, but they have not returned. There's a shortage of them.
In a shortage, tur
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I must disagree that it is self-correcting.
It may *eventually* self correct but it can remain rotten for a decade.
And it *can* impact quality by hiring people who simply meet DEI quotas but lack the proper experience and skills. And (a bit speculative) I think they have a higher percentage of people who feel "entitled and above the rules".
However, I'm unaware of *any* DEI issues at Boeing. My impression was the company merged with mcDonnell Douglass that had a lower culture of quality and Boeing was succ
Re: Or is that the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Or is that the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then companies started saying, profit is not as important as reducing our carbon emissions.
Then companies started saying, profit is not as important as "inclusivity".
Then companies started to say "we can't do any work without a lot of training that assumes all of our employees are monsters who will rape anyone at the drop of a hat".
Pretty soon companies were not caring about profits or quality at all, but only making sure they were offending no-one, inside or outside the company... and here we are today.
Maybe what needs to happen is a little more focus back on profit and hard facts like numbers.
It's hard to argue that employees doing unacceptable nonsense like this is not directly tied to inclusive hiring practices that require hiring people because of the color of their skin, rather than skill or even ethical background.
What a long winded way to say "Fox told me Boeing is failing because they hired unqualified minorities"
Boeing used to do this work internally but they didn't feel like paying union shop wages so they contracted out to a cheaper company Spirit Aerosystems. The old saying is always true. You get what you pay for. You pay low wages to aerospace workers you get low quality work as a result.
Re:Or is that the problem? (Score:4, Interesting)
"they didn't feel like paying union shop wages so they contracted out to a cheaper company Spirit Aerosystems"
They weren't doing anything that intelligent.
Boeing was chasing a metric called "return on assets" and figured they could reduce the denominator by putting lots of big dumb assets like "factories" in a different company.
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Fox is just insane now. They're stuck with a tick in the brain forcing them to apply politics to literally every story. Even boring old business stories are given a heavy handed political spin, because that's the Fox model. The fluffy morning show segments ("let's make a cake with Martha, but first some kittens!") are heavy handed political nonsense. So where you could at one point ignore the editorial slant of a news outlet, because editorials were restricted to a single segment, now the editorials are u
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I would argue that is backwards. I would argue that in fact things were going pretty well when profit was a primary goal.
There's a difference between making a decent profit, and what these cabrones are doing. Do you not see that?
It's no crime to run an airplane maker. It's no crime to run an airplane maker that makes money hand over fist. As long as the planes stay in the air, and operators don't start sending you mailbags of hatemail (Boeing never got those.)
It *SHOULD*be a crime, to run an airplane maker that makes money hand over first by demonstrably short-cutting every prior practice they had pre-merger in the interes
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Profit, as a motivational force, is ethically neutral. It can be either good or bad. Boeing has made it chaotic evil.
For and example of "good profit motivation" look at HP in the 1960's-70's.
The problem is that something that is ethically neutral AND is a motivational force is quite easy to corrupt. And we've seen that happen repeatedly.
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I know for fact USAF stopped taking KC-46s like 15, 20 years ago because each plane had something like 40 pounds of FOD in them!
That's an interesting "fact" you've got there, seeing as how the first KC-46 was delivered in 2019 and the aircraft didn't even have its first flight until December of 2014.
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The pursuit of Next Quarter's Numbers have completely wrecked ALL our big names. GM, Ford, Boeing, etc etc etc.
I would argue that is backwards. I would argue that in fact things were going pretty well when profit was a primary goal. Then companies started saying, profit is not as important as reducing our carbon emissions.
That is utterly bizarre. The current problems have nothing whatsoever to do with reducing carbon emissions.
Are you trolling, or just posting anti-woke memes that have nothing to do with the subject on a lark?
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It's hard to argue that employees doing unacceptable nonsense like this is not directly tied to inclusive hiring practices that require hiring people because of the color of their skin, rather than skill or even ethical background.
It's hard to argue that Slashdotters writing unacceptable nonsense like this is not directly tied to moral and intellectual bankruptcy.
Re:Or is that the problem? (Score:4, Informative)
These are not Boeing's problems. Boeing's problems stem from focusing on profits above quality, period Boeing isn't having problems for being woke, or being green, or worrying about RoHS, or any social issue regarding gender or race. The problem is that it is cutting corners in order to make more money.
Previously, Boeing was an engineering driven company, with executives who understood engineering. Today the executives understand spreadsheets and dollar signs and deadlines. It is true that they didn't maximize profit with engineers at the helm. Maximizing profits though does not increase quality, unless you're at the stage where low quality is why revenue is low (which might be the case today).
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A cult called McDonnell-Douglas management.
I don't know what allowed them to be the ones to essentially take over Boeing, but after the farkup that was the DC-10 it doesn't even make sense.
Re: Or is that the problem? (Score:2)
I don't know either. But it could be greed. I know of two companies of different size merging, and the owners retaining managers from the smaller company and purging the rest.
Why? I don't know. But there may be the assumption the smaller company is leaner, pays less, and its managers know how to deliver more with less.
But that smaller company was small for a reason. This is often missed.
This is a common trick mega corps use (Score:5, Insightful)
Wells Fargo did the same thing and got nailed to the wall for it. They set impossible sales targets and cut back on monitoring the employees and then when the employees cheated to keep their jobs (it was 2008, everyone was pretty desperate) they said "oh, we follow all the rules, it's those dastardly employees!".
We didn't buy it when Wells Fargo pulled it and we're not buying it now.
This is why you need Unions. Unions call management on this bullshit all the time. Boeing has a union, but it's too weak to stand up to management after decades of Ergonomics.
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Ah right, we need unions but the union failed because it wasn't union-y enough or something...
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Unions *CAN* call management. But if they're run by MBAs, they won't do it for the right reasons.
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It's quite impossible at the given cost demands, as can easily be shown in exhibit A, i.e. Boeing.
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Boeing's Washington workers are unionized. However, their South Carolina factory, where the 787 is manufactured, is not. In fact, Boeing had their WA and SC teams compete in order to see who would get the 787 factory.
The whole competition was really just a way to get major concessions from the WA union - which Boeing got - pay cuts and
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Set impossible standards, fire anyone that doesn't meet them, pretend you care about safety and blame the workers when the shit hits the fan.
Maybe, but wrong in this situation.
Boeing management spent decades creating a culture that tactically encouraged this kind of behaviour in the name of increasing production and keeping down costs.
But then the shit hit the fan when two 737 Max's nosedived into the ground and since then a backed up toilet has been directly situated under the fan and it hasn't really stopped.
Now, I suspect Boeing upper management desperately does care about quality at this point, but they spent years building the wrong kind of
Re:This is a common trick mega corps use (Score:5, Informative)
The only reason you enjoy things like a 40 hour work week and vacation time is because of unions. You think companies willingly accepted these terms? It took massive strikes and people dying. That's why you see so much propaganda around the four day work week. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Fun fact, the Unions turned to the Mob (Score:2)
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The reason the English have no car industry is their unions spent more time striking than building the alleged cars Leyland was building in the 70s
You're comparing a country with labour laws with a country that doesn't. I'm not a union person. I think they are pointless waste of resources who promote protection of the slack deadweight and a drain on a company in general. I say that with the qualification that I live in a country with very strict labour laws that prevent my employer from fucking me over.
America is not that. America needs unions.
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America is not that. America needs unions.
America needs a different kind of union. Another poster further up the thread brought up public unions and how they've had a similarly stunting effect on public works.
Teacher's union right now is.. well. I'll just leave it there.
Point is -- unions were once needed, true. But over time they have transformed into a truly terrible thing.
Like any basket case.. strip it down to pins and springs, and put it back together again, after replacing all the rotted, broken parts.
Or, burn it and rebuild it, if that su
Re: This is a common trick mega corps use (Score:2)
Unfettered Union power is a terrible thing. So is unfettered corporate power. And political power. And judicial power.
Even the local HOA Karen.
It always corrupts.
Now, how to strike the right balance, thatâ(TM)s the hard part.
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Yes, yes, we're thankful for actions they took, and were rightfully needed -- 100 fucking years ago.
The reason the English have no car industry is their unions spent more time striking than building the alleged cars Leyland was building in the 70s
The reason our cars are still sub-par compared to other offerings is the same.,
Looks like car manufacturing is doing just fine in the UK. https://www.reuters.com/busine... [reuters.com]
The reason it's so expensive to do anything in NYC is unions, and politicians and their union lackeys.
You fail to account, and are unwilling to accept, that unions changed from the time they were formed and relevant and good, to the paralyzing cancerous carbuncle they are now.
There's gotta be a better way. Gov't supervision is ineffectual and unions shield the incompetent / under-qualified and engage in extortion and other shenanigans. They are actually holding businesses back now.
Everything in NYC is expensive, as is with every major city. You think it's cheap to build something in Orlando or Dallas?
Notice unions are rare in Japan. Notice that Japan is also strangely.. what's the phrase your president used the other day... "xenophobic." But LOOK AT JAPAN. Some of the best quality cars. Low crime. Clean. Huh. Maybe they know a thing or two we should study and emulate?
Japan has a work ethic like no other country. But this work ethic is slowly killing the country with the elderly starting to outnumber the young workers. The country is having negative population growth and its literally paying families to have children. https://japannews.yomiuri.co.j... [yomiuri.co.jp] It's no s
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Looks like car manufacturing is doing just fine in the UK
*sigh*
You really are something.
OK, Mr. Bunker. Tell me.
Rolls-Royce. English, or German?
Bentley. English, or German?
Mini. English, or German?
Jaguar Land Rover. English, or Indian?
TVR. English or Deceased?
Lotus. English or Arabian?
The last English car left is Morgan.
As i said, the English no longer have a car industry to speak of. They assemble other country's cars, and I happen to drive one. A Mini made in Oxford, England, with a kraut VIN.
Now.. you were saying?
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You do realise that the German car industry workforce is fully unionised?
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Point of order, the federal Dept of Ed is just as complicit in the destruction of the American education system. The department needs to be jettisoned entirely and education monies transferred directly to whichever school a child is enrolled in by their parents.
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Point of order, the federal Dept of Ed is just as complicit in the destruction of the American education system.
Mostly responsible for it's destruction, I'd say.
That's a right-wing trick to privatize education (Score:2)
It's like those idiots that defunded their government and suddenly their town was full of bears because they didn't have any money to pay for wildlife control. Libertarian Paradise sounds great until you're actually living it
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Bear control is cheap. 12 gauge slugs aren't that expensive.
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What if the work was done in a non union shop?
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Don't you get it? Union or non-union it doesn't matter!
If the culture is such that pencilwhipping is accepted, and overlooked, there's no union that's gonna fix that. All the union is going to do is get in the way of cleaning house at the bottom.
All well and fine.
But the TOP is where the cleaning most needs to happen, because pencil whipping is something that is allowed -- it is not an "accident" or an "oversight." It is a sign of some very bad rot. And that rot comes from the top, from the mentailty o
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The comparison is actually apt. In both cases, workers did what they could to work around impossible demands of management in an attempt to keep their jobs.
When your options are to either follow the rules and fail to meet your targets, so you will almost invariably get fired, or to ignore the rules and meet your target, and only get fired if for some reasons the shit hits the fan, which option do you choose?
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Remind us again the number of CEOs and Corporate execs that get canned for pencil-whipping....still waiting...
Not nearly enough,but that Bankman-Fried guy kinda qualifies. He didn't pencil whip, he just cooked the books like a well-done beef wellington.
Problem with this kind of malefaction is that while the attitude / DNA / whatever that makes a bad shop a bad shop comes from the top, the top is shielded by the middle managers. They're the ones that issue the orders, they're the ones who get the axe. The workers continue doing the same BS, the C-suite is protected, and the replacements are likely even more of m
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Hire employees? But we must do more with less! The consultant company we paid big money for said so!
hard to believe (Score:2)
The first caliper (measuring device) that I bought was a starett, it came with the info and tools to calibrate it along with a calibration schedule... it was fairly pric
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Unless management is pushing, 'faster, better' policies on the workforce it is hard to believe that someone would claim to have performed a check without having done it.
Really? Hard to imagine?
Hmm lets see I could spend 20min crawling around inspecting this thing, the last 5 I have looked at having been just fine or I can just check this box, and play with my phone some more...
Really when it comes to stuff like this the only way is either legalistic consequences for getting caught. You signed this without inspection, no discussion, no exit interview, security will escort you from the building now.
Otherwise you have to be doing multiple inspections where the inspector is no
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Really? Hard to imagine?
Hmm lets see I could spend 20min crawling around inspecting this thing, the last 5 I have looked at having been just fine or I can just check this box, and play with my phone some more...
From the bean counters perspective, the employees aren't making any money by doing paperwork. They make money when parts leave the shop. There is your answer.
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Almost correct. But it's more along the lines of "I could spend 20 minutes crawling through this crate to inspect it, problem is, I have to do 4 planes an hour. Well, the last 3 were ok and my time's up, so I guess the 4th will be ok, too".
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You're mostly old fashioned in the sense that you seem to have gotten enough time to actually do your job well.
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Well, congratulations for getting promoted.
All you get today for doing a good job is more work and the hate of your fellow workers because you're the new gold standard they have to conform to.
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Common Practice (Score:5, Insightful)
Not us gov (Score:2)
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Yeah, these pesky workers and their corner cutting. And we have everything in place. Really! A process for everything!
Work protocol? Sure, we have a work protocol in place, here, see? They have to do this, this and this! Apparently they don't. What did he say? He only has time to do 1, 2 and 3 and has to skip 4 because the time allotted isn't enough? Well, then I guess quality control would have to catch that!
So quality control is to blame. We have a protocol for that in place, here, you see? What did he sa
Sounds like corporate culture was problematic (Score:5, Insightful)
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You mean like the one that died at an early age recently.
Perhaps it was natural causes. But I wonder.
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Let's talk about all those whistle blowers shall we.
Yes...
looks left, looks right
let's "talk"...
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would employees would skip a non-functional step in the process?
To save time.
Why do these employees want to save time?
Pressure to "Get it done now."
Pressure from where?
Management.
Found the problem!
Get a load of this BS (Score:2)
"As you all know, we have zero tolerance for not following processes" - maybe 20 years ago!
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"As you all know, we have zero tolerance for not following processes" - maybe 20 years ago!
30 years, now. Time flies in a way that Boeing seemingly can't.
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Still the case. But by now, not following the process is a requirement. On all levels.
Workers cannot follow the proper processes because they have to cut corners to keep up with the required pace or get fired.
But that's not really a big problem because QA also has to cut corners to keep pace and won't find their blunders.
And so on.
Old Boeing and Today's Boeing (Score:5, Interesting)
When Old Boeing was a thing, America and the world itself were different.
Consider this:
The Model 288 -- the B-17 prototype -- was built by Boeing with their own money, with their own time, not at Air Force behest. They *knew* war was coming, even by '37 the whole world kinda knew. So they made this, showed it to the USAF, who reluctantly started testing. eventually... well, you know the rest. Over 10k built. And many shot down.
The Model 367-80. A bullshit name, but it was a bluff made to sound like a new version of an old prop plane. But it was the prototype 707 instead - built after Comet showed how not to do it. Swept wings. Twice the capacity. Boeing built that on their on dime, on their own time. They literally bet every desk, every pencil, every building, every piece of furniture on that project. It gave not one but two airplanes -- the KC135 tanker, still flying, and the slightly plumper 707, which gave the world the Jet Age and shrank it hard.
And then they did it AGAIN. They bet every building, every asset, every machine tool, to built the 747 prototype. On their own time. For a competition the C-5 won. But Juan Trippe of Pan Am saw it, liked it, and bought 25 right there.
What I"m getting at is.. Old Boeing had cojones. They bet the farm twice, maybe three times and won, and won big. B-17 took the war to Hitler's front door. 707 and 747 re-wrote the world. I'll note 747 took 18 months from scribble to flyable prototype, all the while they were building the factory to build it, as they built it.
Today's Boeing.. wouldn't take such a chance. Today's Boeing is frankly incapable of the crazy that 707 and 747 were. Or the brilliant decision to make a narrowbody and widebody that shared the same airfoil, engines and flight deck. I'm talking 757 and 767
Had they any smarts, by the time they'd finished 777, they knew 73, 75 and 76 were getting old. They should've done the 767 trick again: A new set of airliners, one fat, one skinny, based on a common set of components.
But no. They went on the weird take that is the 787, without making a narrow counterpart of it to replace the now-very-obsolete 737. They coulda had it all. Again. But it didn't happen because right after 777 was done, the McD merger happened. The good people left.
That's what MBA-think does. It hobbles companies. I lay the disaster of 787's development and 737's long-overdue retirement at the feet of the new management.
And believe it or not, the 747 prototype when it came out, it flew two weeks later.
When the 787 came out, the roll-out bird was devoid of engines, and it was months before it flew. They rolled out an incomplete prototype, you may even call it a mockup.
That's when I knew Boeing had lost it. Not with MCAS, but with their nightmare development hell with 787. MCAS just drove home the point that not developing 787 and a new narrowbody alongside it was patently retarded, short-sighted, and out of character, considering the smashing success 757 / 767 are.
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The reason Boeing isn't making a new narrowbody is the cost to certify a new airframe and get pilots trained on it (because you have to be type-certified on a particular airplane to fly it; just because you can fly a Boeing 737 doesn't mean you can fly an A320) is prohibitive. If they can't get enough fuel savings from it to interest the airlines enough to take on the pilot training cost, and to cover the airframe certification cost, there's no point in making it. Better to keep making 737 variants and ta
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You do have a point, and a 787 (fat) and 7?7 (skinny) but with the same flight deck, wings, engines, tail of the 78 wouldn't fly like a 73.
And what they needed was a modern, fuel-sippy 73 that flew like 73.. ehhe. It could've been done, and still can.. just.. re-do all of mcas 'til it's safe.. and don sell airplanes without at least triple redundant sensors.
Re: Old Boeing and Today's Boeing (Score:2)
Do you work for the soon to be gone ceo?
Everyone gets it: creating a new plane is expensive. Training is expensive. But, you will never get the economics that the airlines are looking for with the 737. Look at what they had to do to get bigger fans on the thing. Seems to me it was one of the causes of several hundred deaths.
Pay me now, or pay me later. May as well get started. Itâ(TM)s not going to get any cheaper.
Otherwise, shut the lights out and go home.
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Otherwise, shut the lights out and go home.
Funny, Boeing themselves paid for that "last one out of Seattle please turn off the lights" .. back in the late 60's. XD
737 is done. It'll take 20 years to design a replacement, the way things are now.
That means Boeing is done. Unless, the customers are willing to accept the positively geriatric 737 with lipstick.
737 is their bread and butter, it's 100% of Southwest's fleet, and a sizable chunk of the short-medium-haul market.
The time to get started was 20 years ago.. or.. roughly when they started on th
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The reason Boeing isn't making a new narrowbody is the cost to certify a new airframe and get pilots trained on it (because you have to be type-certified on a particular airplane to fly it; just because you can fly a Boeing 737 doesn't mean you can fly an A320) is prohibitive. If they can't get enough fuel savings from it to interest the airlines enough to take on the pilot training cost, and to cover the airframe certification cost, there's no point in making it. Better to keep making 737 variants and talk the FAA into accepting that they're basically the same thing.
The cost of not doing it will bite them in the arse even harder.
Airbus can't open it's order books fast enough for the A220 and A320 families, Boeing is struggling to sell the 737-8 MAX in a market screaming for 150-200 seat narrowbodies.
The longer they wait, the longer the deficiencies in the 737 will hurt them. Airlines love the A320 because it's a more efficient aircraft, lower turnaround costs (B737's are so old they can't even accommodate ULD containers in the hold, so bags and cargo have to be l
You didn't mention the B-47 (Score:2)
Boeing proved the swept wing and podded engine design with the B-47 (first flight in 1947), prior to the 367-80 (first flight in 1954). B-47 was entirely government funded.
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Boeing proved the swept wing and podded engine design with the B-47 (first flight in 1947), prior to the 367-80 (first flight in 1954). B-47 was entirely government funded.
Heh yeah. Stolen data from the Germans, who took it from the Italians, the first fella to figure out the sweep was Italian.
I'm pretty sure USAF paid for the development of the B52. by then they were hooked and we had LeMay on a purchasing tear.
I hear the pilots loved the B47, that it flew like a big Sabre.
Entirely managements fault (Score:4, Insightful)
Correct, AND... (Score:4, Insightful)
We'll know that ACTUAL corrective action is being taken when a bunch of executive and manager heads roll.
As long as worker bees are being "re-trained" or "disciplined" or are being "separated from the company" etc, Boeing is not serious about correcting its ways. In fact, if they dump some worker bees it MIGHT actually be a convenient re-use of something they wanted to do anyway - get leaner.
There is simply NO WAY some worker bees on the assembly line decided to skip procedures and sign-off anyway without some management approval or [more likely] direct instruction, probably over worker bee objections. People who do not work in the aerospace sector may not appreciate how regulated it is, and how much paper needs signatures which are tethered to potentially severe penalties.
Yep, blame the "workers". (Score:4, Insightful)
In such cases, it is _allways_ management that is at fault. Management _must_ make sure inspections are independently verified, there are spot-checks, there is enough time to do the tests and no pressure to skip them, there are video-recordings, etc. If management makes it easy to skip the tests (as they have done here), they carry the full blame.
Re: Yep, blame the "workers". (Score:2)
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Sure. But this is stuff that kills people if done wrong. Hence you want those additional checks and you want a workforce that _understands_ why they are done.
QA for Boeing, you skip the tests and they out you (Score:2)
Last thought on this (Score:2)
Not only does the fall of Boeing bother me because it is emblematic of what's happened to America, it bothers me because all these weird deaths around Boeing are something I expect from countries like the old USSR, or today's Russia, or China, or Korea.. but certainly not "The West."
perhaps obvious (Score:2)
DEI for the win.
Re: Lazy B (Score:2)
Union can't protect workers who don't follow safety standards. That tells us that nobody was checking up to make sure they did because it might affect the bottom line, which in turn tells us it was management's fault and had nothing at all to do with any unions.
We already knew this because of all the cost cutting crap Boing has done over the years. Notably, they shifted a lot of production to contractors on whom they never checked up.
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I believe the comment just below yours nailed the problem perfectly. Management pushing workers to make unrealistic deadlines and then turning a blind eye for the sake of shareholders. Blame the bean counters, not the union.
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I guess Boeing was too cheap to do any audits on the work Spirit was doing. Audits don't bring profits.