“Mack Daddy Planes” Grounded

Is there a relationship between our public education system and this airplane?

Damn, we going back to The Hindenburg? Forget about investment, this motherfucker won’t be around ten years from now.

Not to be confused with “Long Legged Mack Daddy Planes”, a.k.a. Air Force One. (Not sure if anyone will get that one.)

We have a winner, the North Charleston aircraft were delivered to India.

I’m an engineer who spent a career in military/aerospace/aviation/med equipment etc. complex, last stint in Fed gov. Spent several years at one giant company working with Boeing engineers at various times subcontractor, partner, competitor.

A core group of us from multiple companies – Boeing,ITT Aerospace, Lockheed Martin, blah blah – worked together in what was then a government technology association to develop technology management of short life cycle components, and their associated continual replacements and upgrades, within final long lifecycle and/or highly regulated, high cost of malfunction product (fighter planes, frequency hopping radio/ Boeing’s planes, tanks, FDA regulated blood analyzers for hospitals, etc.) We met a few times a year all over the country near our companies. Some of us would go to the factories of manufacturers that made components we had to use in our product – semiconductors/batteries/LED lighting, etc.) which aren’t built in this country because the infrastructure investment combined with environmental regulations precludes it. (I’m not judging or making any determination good or bad. I havent’ studied data on the issue so I don’t know)

The issues in developing/designing/producing/supporting this type of end product, with shorter life cycle components for which the commercial market drives infrastructure investment and the associated regulatory and other concerns of procuring components from other countries, are complex.

I have never ever seen programs for this type product get built on schedule and to budget, with exceptions in some areas when technical folks had more control. The people that do the bids are usually business managers who make commissions on winning the proposal. It’s a ridiculous farce. The military/government program managers who select the bids understand, the companies doing the bids understand, but it’s all to keep up appearances. When cost overruns inevitably happen, the contracts person on the customer side figures out a way to allow it as ‘unforeseable/supplier problem, blah so the contractor isn’t dinged, because then the customer selection process would be suspect. BTW, I’ve been on both sides. Certified in gov procurement (technical…NOT BEAN COUNTER!!!)

After the company wins the bid, the project gets turned over to the technical teams. Now we have to work to what our lovely business leadership set up. Even when we are part of the proposal process, and we tell them the cost/risk trade off analysis, they underbid it anyway knowing upper management will take it out of production/engineering later. At one giant company, we actually staged an engineering walk out. Everyone was on mandated 12 hour days, I kid you not, because the business folks won the proposal and commissions by underbidding how many techies were needed. We were driven, essentially, to work for their commissions. Yah, I’ll take care of that for you, dudes…

In all my years of handling/managing/developing these types of programs, the overwhelming source of fubar I’ve seen is not because of lack of dedication, capacity, or competency of line folks, the engineers, production team leads, etc. These folks care about their product, some, more than they care about their own vehicles and other personal equipment. Union or non-union, this state or that state. No matter. The only difference I have seen with Union is the pace of work. I have seen union shops take far longer to do the same task.

I have also seen occasional mishaps that must happen in the physical world – someone left a tool in the fuselage, someone forgot the cotter pin, the pick and place machine bent the legs of the chip, etc. I’ve never seen these mishaps cause final product malfunction.

The mishaps I have seen cause product malfunction were traceable, whether publicly admitted or not, to the business decisions leadership rightfully has authority to make. I have seen production mistakes when management plays with numbers by firing higher paid staff and QC to reduce costs and mandates production workers do 12 hour shifts. Of course they make mistakes. I have seen engineers agree to sign off on substitute parts when the original supplier can’t make schedule, because they were ordered by upper management to keep the line moving.

I personally had a manager early in my career who ordered me to sign off on production of a servo for commercial aircraft. Under FAA rules if a plane lost direction control because of this servo I could go to jail I refused and told him to sign it himself. He didn’t. He tried to crush me by demoting me. I won. He was directed to keep the ‘token woman’ engineer so when I was recruited by another company who knew my work from my industry presentations, got a hiring bonus and over a 10% raise from another large company, he got demoted from manager. HA HA HA peckerhead!!! (okay it was long ago but it is sentimental because it was first production battle)

I bear the scars of many battles with all levels of corporate command. Most of them I won because my external customers had to live with any decision for more profit over less product robustness or features. I employed their support successfully to support my technical objectives.

Not all technical folks resist being directed to sign their name to, let’s say, put Battery manufacuter1 on the parts list instead of manufacturer2, or, to eliminate the redundant safety circuit to reduce assembly cost.

Although I haven’t worked with Boeing for many years, I doubt things have changed much.

All this is to say a reasoned consideration of the issues can provide a more informed speculation on the root cause of Boeing’s battery issue. It is, however, still pure speculation.