[HN Gopher] Boeing missing key elements of safety culture: FAA r...
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Boeing missing key elements of safety culture: FAA report
Author : elorant
Score : 317 points
Date : 2024-02-27 13:30 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ainonline.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ainonline.com)
| chongli wrote:
| I think the ultimate problem with Boeing is that they're too big
| to fail. They're too important to the US's strategic interests so
| the government won't allow them to go out of business despite
| gross incompetence.
|
| A classic case of "putting all your eggs in one basket."
| jajko wrote:
| No pressure for excellence usually leads to lack thereof
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Isn't this what our version of capitalism encourages?
|
| Grow to dominate so much of the market and of stock and pension
| portfolios at all costs, that you'll have to be bailed out no
| matter your incompetence.
|
| So as long as this behavior only gets rewarded and never
| punished, why would you expect different results?
| nequo wrote:
| Car manufacturing is similar in a lot of ways yet notably
| different in the putting all eggs in the same basket sense
| that parent mentions. Ford and GM are too big to fail yet
| they do compete and it does lead to at least one of them
| making decent cars that don't fall apart under you.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Ford and GM have much more competition than Being. It's a
| lot easier to enter the auto market than the aircraft
| market.
| nequo wrote:
| That is true, but Boeing wasn't always the only player in
| aircraft manufacturing either. Even subsidizing two or
| three players so that they can compete might be better
| for safety and quality than letting them merge and
| operate as a complete monopoly.
| amelius wrote:
| Maybe true for the company, but certainly not for its
| management.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| The last one fired got a $60M golden parachute and then
| became CEO of another company. There seems to be little
| incentive there.
| chii wrote:
| what gets to me is how anyone would hire the fired CEO
| given the reputation.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Typically it happens when buddies are on the board.
| tass wrote:
| I haven't looked at their financials, but I'm assuming he
| successfully increased profits for Boeing.
|
| He's probably hireable so long as there's no culture of
| safety or engineering to be destroyed.
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| A known quantity to the industry who managed to deploy
| billions in budgets for a massive player is valuable at
| the helm of any company that wants those kinds of things.
| lucianbr wrote:
| Seems like nobody hired him as CEO. Him and some buddies
| tried to start something, and it didn't get anywhere, and
| they lost money with it. Sounds quite reasonable to me :)
|
| https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-
| aerospace/forme...
| lucianbr wrote:
| What company did he become CEO of? Couldn't find anything
| on Google.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| New Vista Acquisition Corp.
| lucianbr wrote:
| I thought he was put CEO of an existing company that did
| something. This was just him and some buddies starting a
| new venture that didn't go anywhere, and they only lost
| money with it.
|
| I mean, it's far less paradoxical than it sounded at
| first.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| I think the problem is not that Boeing is too big to fail, it's
| the massive cost of designing, certifying and efficiently
| building a new airframe, which makes it hard for a competitor
| to emerge. The US doesn't really have another basket to put
| eggs into.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Except that they have had issues with other things as well.
| Over on the space side, their Starliner crew capsule has had
| several safety debacles over the past 4 years, such that
| maybe it'll finally carry crew this year. First it was poorly
| tested software, then stuck valves, then the tape they
| wrapped certain wires in to make them more fire resistant
| turned out to not work, and then finally after all that
| testing, their parachute system had issues.
|
| Boeing has had cultural issues for a while now, part of their
| rocketry division was forced to be spun out (by the
| government) with Lockmart's into ULA because Boeing was
| caught conducting espionage on Lockmart, which would've
| potentially disqualified them from bidding on launches. They
| had also had information leaked to them about bidding on the
| Artemis lunar lander contracts.
|
| Plus other incidents like trying to get people at ULA
| proposing things like orbital refueling systems fired because
| if they allowed such technology to emerge, Boeing couldn't
| get blank checks from the government for building near-
| useless rockets.
|
| That last one, in my opinion, making it clear that they're
| exploiting the perception that they're too big to fail.
| gmerc wrote:
| Why is Airbus not falling out of the sky?
| giva wrote:
| They do, the just need more effort:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447
| thelastgallon wrote:
| "Air France and Airbus have been investigated for
| manslaughter since 2011, but in 2019, prosecutors
| recommended dropping the case against Airbus and charging
| Air France with manslaughter and negligence, concluding,
| "the airline was aware of technical problems with a key
| airspeed monitoring instrument on its planes but failed
| to train pilots to resolve them"
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Not a great example. Any plane would have crashed with
| the pilots doing what they did. Most planes don't do well
| when you try to climb them out of a stall. (Climb out,
| not power out.)
| velcrovan wrote:
| The federal government should buy a controlling share in the
| company, problem solved.
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| Federal government can't run itself today. Probably not going
| to be effective running Boeing either.
| mrtksn wrote:
| How does a failure look like? I mean, this is not a financial
| institution and in the case of a financial failure people who
| make planes, the machines they use and all the IP wouldn't
| disappear.
|
| The Boing might actually be too big to fail but their failure,
| IMHO, looks like what we have today: An inability to make high
| quality cutting edge aircraft. For the USA, the disaster would
| be to be reliant on EU/Russa/Brazil/Canada/China for conducting
| its transportation operations in this massive country.
|
| What happens if people start freaking out when their planes are
| not Airbus? Would increase in government contracts keeping the
| stocks and profits the same mitigate the problems?
|
| So maybe Boing has failed already, its just that its still
| institutionally solvent for one reason or another.
| adolph wrote:
| > in the case of a financial failure people who make planes,
| the machines they use and all the IP wouldn't disappear.
|
| Things get lost all the time. People move on, retire,
| machines require maintenance and remanufacturing, IP might
| describe an end state but not how to get there. Some say
| Boeing itself is an example of this after the MD merger.
| dboreham wrote:
| This argument doesn't make sense: the US military is also too
| big to fail, yet apparently reasonably competent.
| fallingknife wrote:
| The US military is a massive inefficient bureaucracy. Just
| look at the $5 billion and 8 years wasted on their failure to
| implement an ERP software system that is standard in large
| organiations https://www.thirdstage-consulting.com/lessons-
| from-the-us-ai...
|
| Note the senate investigation report that describes an
| "organizational disaster" that caused the failure. Don't
| assume competence because of size and persistence.
| kube-system wrote:
| The US military is the largest employer on Earth, some
| amount of bureaucracy is inevitable. But they are not a
| business and do not optimize for dollar-efficiency like
| for-profit businesses do. They optimize for other goals.
|
| 'Wasting' 5 billion out of an 842 billion dollar budget,
| for an organization that doesn't even have to make money,
| is nothing. Plenty of startups squander even more money,
| and never accomplish any of the entire point of a for-
| profit company, making money.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| I think this is a common civilian misunderstanding of how
| the military breeds competence.
|
| The US Military is absurdly competent at what its mission
| is, war fighting and logistics. What it is not competent at
| is things that are not yet internalized as part of that
| mission. Unfortunately non visible logistics (software)
| hasn't made that cultural shift yet, and once it does will
| take a long time to breed the institutional competence that
| the military leans on, primarily due to the compensation
| gulf.
| bee_rider wrote:
| What does efficiency have to do with anything? Efficiency
| and robustness are often opposed (one hates redundancy and
| the other loves it, for example).
| lp4vn wrote:
| Modern capitalism supresses competition, that's what happens.
| What if McDonnell Douglas had never been merged? What if
| Embraer had been bought by Boeing?
|
| That's the harm that monopolies do to society and yet somehow
| they have been even incentivized in recent times.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| This is when you split the company's civilian aircraft
| operations into two companies.
| spamizbad wrote:
| IIRC Boeing's defense and airliner business units are separate.
| So they really aren't too big to fail: the defense side is
| insulated from the commercial airliner side.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| Commercial airline manufacture is also in our global
| strategic interest.
| adolph wrote:
| Why is that? Could it be that reduced commercial aircraft
| lead to better outcomes for high speed rail and future
| suborbital passenger rockets? Is seeing a strategic
| interest in commercial aircraft a local minima that
| prevents further improvement?
| tsunamifury wrote:
| This is some paranoid nonsense.
|
| It's that keeping capacity for one of the leading forms
| of global travel is a strategic interest. Don't let your
| conspiracies get in the way of the obvious.
|
| Also I feel like the rail circle jerk is so unearned.
| Last time I was in London it cost 100 pounds to fly to
| paris from London downtown airport and 600 to take the
| Chunnel. How "superior".
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't see the paranoia or conspiracy in their comment.
| Plane based infrastructure could be a local minima that
| we've bungled our way into without any need for
| coordination.
| adolph wrote:
| Hey, no paranoid conspiracy intended. Simply thinking out
| the counterfactuals.
|
| Is tying a particular activity to "national interest"
| itself a form of paranoia? What about passenger aircraft
| is a strategic interest? For example, the US seems to do
| ok with little large-scale shipbuilding outside military
| concerns. People seem to take cruises from the US in
| ever-larger cruise ships without a domestic capacity for
| building them.
|
| Additionally, no disagreement on my part regarding the
| high regard people have for hypothetical rail. On the
| other hand, I'm open to the idea that high capacity
| terrestrial transportation similar to rail would have
| cause to improve if airplanes weren't in an optimization
| sweet spot.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| They are _to a point_. The military side typically uses
| Boeing 's airliner offering as a basis for things like
| transport, AWACS, and logistics aircraft.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| I'm unsure what you mean by transport and logistics; we use
| civilian airframes with any amount of modifications for
| only one in production aircraft that I'm aware of (P-8
| Poseidon is based on the 737). The TACAMO and AWACS are
| both based on the 707, which is long since out of
| production. None of our strategic lift capability
| (logistics in your comment?) is based on civilian
| airframes.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| KC-767, C-40, KC-46, E-4, VC-25.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| Thanks! I was in aviation, but primarily tactical and
| expeditionary. I always forget about the C-40 despite
| having ridden in one multiple times.
|
| The E-4 and VC-25 aren't really a fair one; you don't
| need the divisions to be the same company for their
| integration (though I suppose it would make it vastly
| cheaper). We also don't fly many at all (meaning cost per
| unit is relatively inconsequential).
|
| I also somehow always forget the tankers. Thanks for
| that.
|
| I'll still maintain the links aren't necessary. I
| honestly think a dedicated military platform for all of
| those would have been a smarter investment and that the
| current way of modifying airliners is suboptimal.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| It's agree it's probably suboptimal, but I don't think
| anyone's going to be willing to front the cash for
| development of a new airframe specifically for
| military/government use. The advantage of the airliner
| route is you have at least some revenue stream to fall
| back on if the military decides it doesn't want the new
| shiny or a court/congressional committee decides the
| military went about choosing the new shiny the wrong way,
| which happens often.
|
| It's just a ton of financial risk. I guess the new
| supersonic startups like Boom think they bring enough
| novelty to the market to justify that risk.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| That's a very solid point.
|
| I do wonder why the heavy lift platforms won't work
| (C-17, etc.).
| ActionHank wrote:
| Sure, but maybe fire and prosecute some of the execs?
|
| Given that they are largely not responsible in delivering the
| value that will ensure continued success of the company, signal
| that risking the lives of people is not a good business
| strategy, and may act as a wake up call for others in
| leadership positions that they should be leading towards what
| is best for customers and the business and not what is going to
| give them the biggest short term payday.
| bux93 wrote:
| It's not that Boeing doesn't have any safety policies or
| procedures, it's just that no-one is aware of them, so nothing
| gets reported or fixed? Those findings are worse than you'd
| expect.. Wonder what it's like over at Airbus and Embraer.
| atoav wrote:
| As far as I know they have a very strict safety culture at
| Airbus. Living in Hamburg, close to their location there, made
| a factory tour once and met multiple employees during the years
| and had chats with them about general ways how things are done
| at the place.
|
| But a few chats with employees and a factory tour isn't the
| most reliable source to judge this.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| It's not that no-one is aware of them.
|
| I read at least two different sets of problems in this report.
| But first, some background. In the following paragraphs you can
| substitute "safety" with "quality" in every instance to get
| equivalent statements that might be more analogous to your
| experiences.
|
| There is big letter "Safety Culture". This is what happens when
| you study emergent behavior that you want to replicate, and try
| to systematize it as much as possible. For excample - as noted
| in the report, "Safety Culture" consists of 5 pillars - this
| categorization is purely the result of research and analysis
| and post-hoc reasoning. The point of "Safety Culture" is that
| we noticed some organizations that have (little letters)
| "safety cultures" or "cultures of safety" which were able to
| achieve long-term excellence in terms of safety, and decided to
| study their common elements. A company "implements" a big
| letter "Safety Culture" in hopes of inoculating and maintaining
| an actual "safety culture".
|
| A Safety Management System is a tool used to achieve and
| maintain the Safety Culture. For those not sure of what "X
| management system" means - it's basically a stack of
| documentation that defines a meta-process and processes that
| all of your other processes need to conform to, and by doing
| so, your employees will be forced into "doing the right thing",
| and aligning their actions and outputs with the goals of Safety
| Culture, and therefore eventually getting you an actual culture
| of safety.
|
| In the worst case when you fail at actually sustaining a real
| safety culture, an SMS then becomes a tool to enforce a minimal
| standard of safety, from even the most apathetic employee. This
| comes at enourmous cost of course. Anyone who has had to wait
| for 3 different authorizations to get a replacement computer at
| work has witnessed an analogous situation.
|
| Another point that's relevant is that the "Safety Culture"
| model that Boeing (and ICAO) is referencing is acutally quite
| young compared to Boeing's overall age. The Safety Culture
| references in the report are from 1997. The first edition of
| the ICAO Safety Management manual is from 2006. Boeing has been
| building safe plans for decades before these "new fangled"
| capital letter things have even existed. It's absolutely
| possible for an organization to build safe product without
| formalized adherence to the formalized "Safety Culture".
|
| Back to problems identified in the report:
|
| The first is that Boeing rolled out a new Safety Management
| System (SMS) in the last 5-8 years, along with adopting "Safety
| Culture" policies. But they seem to have blotched the roll out.
| The report notes that Boeing has its legacy policies and
| processes for dealing with safety, and those continue in
| parallel to the new policies and procedures defined in their
| SMS. They also noted that employees were skeptical of the
| sustainability of the SMS - ie, they were not sure if this was
| just some management fad. Many of the findings about "lack of
| knowledge" read exactly as I'd expect from someone who
| apathetically clicked through an online training module because
| they assumed it was useless fluff, because all the real work
| they've ever seen was handled through legacy processes. Note
| that a blotched roll out is not the predestined result, even in
| an environment which was previously lacking a real safety
| culture, or even middling management.
|
| This is a problem, but could maybe be tolerable (from the
| perspective of short-term safety), except for the fact that it
| seemed that that legacy backbone has been rotting away in terms
| of its effectiveness. The dual system surely isn't helping with
| its effectiveness.
|
| In other words, while this report focuses on Boeing's failure
| to achieve "big letter" Safety Culture, reading between the
| lines also implies a general lack of actual safety culture, and
| a lack of competent change management.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| Maybe if companies stopped kneeling before the almighty alter of
| the shareholder, they might actually care what happens beyond the
| next quarter.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| That's the whole point of Capitalism.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| The stock market is not a requirement of capitalism. Nor is
| it a requirement for management to be beholden to
| shareholders in the short term. It's a culture problem. Apple
| for example, gives two shits about shareholder short/medium
| term concerns about sinking billions into the Apple Car and
| Apple Vision Pro that may take a very very long time to
| become profitable (if ever.)
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| Why would the shareholders want to risk turning the company
| into a smoking hole in the ground and making their shares
| worthless?
|
| That said I think it's a bit suspicious when so much of the
| ownership is institutional investors who seem to just own each
| other, and appear to work against the very interest of
| maintaining and growing the value of the investment, which is
| what one would think being a shareholder is all about.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Why would the shareholders want to risk turning the company
| into a smoking hole in the ground and making their shares
| worthless?
|
| Because they're getting out long before the stock craters.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| There are plenty of ways to make shareholder value without
| actually improving Boeing's product safety culture. Even if
| the planes are deathtraps, what are customers going to do
| about it? Sue? Lawsuits will take years. Buy Airbus planes?
| Order queue's backed up for years. Ground their fleets? Then
| they can't make money. Every solution takes years while
| shareholders have to worry about the next 90 days. Even those
| with a long position can just propose that the company start
| selling off assets in order to make up the losses. That's
| what corporate raiders do, and it's what happened to GE.
|
| Shareholders do not care about companies. They care about
| making money.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| It has little to do with "shareholder value".
|
| The original sin is paying executives with stocks and
| especially stock options. It creates catastrophic and
| corrupting incentive structure.
|
| Their incentive is to raise the stock price long enough to sell
| some amount of stock options. The company be damned.
|
| There are many examples, but the classic one is Dick Fuld, the
| CEO of Lehman Brothers. He drove Lehman Brothers into
| Bankruptcy all while becoming dynastically rich.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Stock compensation for execs should have much longer
| timelines. You should have to hold the bag for a minimum of
| 18+ months after you depart, although 5 years would be
| better.
| dboreham wrote:
| The KPIs are all good though.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Except "number of days since last door fell off" which is
| trending a bit lower than we'd like to see. And "number of days
| since last damning report from our regulator saying our safety
| culture is totally messed up" which is (checks notes) 1 day.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| How close is the FAA to detecting that safety is not a business
| model?
|
| "We don't 'sell' safety; that's not our business model." -Boeing
| CEO
|
| ref: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2019/10/30/when-
| compa...
| hef19898 wrote:
| In aerospace, saftey actually is the business model so?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > In aerospace, saftey actually is the business model so?
|
| I should have inc the relevant quote(fixd). Anyway, that was
| my understanding. But in my linked article, Boeing's CEO
| corrects me:
|
| _" We don't 'sell' safety; that's not our business model."_
|
| This is his day job after all.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Well, seems he was somewhat mistaken after all, wasn't he?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Where was he mistaken? He knew his job, did it to
| completion and was very well rewarded the entire time.
|
| His work at Boeing is so well regarded that investors
| couldn't wait to firehose capital his way.
|
| ref:https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-
| aerospace/forme...
|
| Boeing's CEO is what success looks like.
| hef19898 wrote:
| And yet Boeing became the posterchild, and but of jokes,
| for really bad engineering. And sold products that killed
| a couple of hundred people... Truely long term success
| for the company.
| foolswisdom wrote:
| Is it not "a" business model, or not Boeing's business
| model? The latter is exactly what the FAA is saying :-).
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Is it not "a" business model, or not Boeing's business
| model? The latter is exactly what the FAA is saying
|
| The FAA doesn't seem to take any notice of Boeing's
| business model.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| And that's completely out of line with the general picture
| on aviation.
|
| The fact that Boeing doesn't think it's their business
| doesn't mean that nobody thinks it's their business.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| No, safety is part of the marketing. If people think the
| planes are safe, then they'll fly on them & customers
| (airlines) will buy them. If people think they're not safe,
| then they won't fly on them and airlines won't want to buy
| them. If someone is actually injured then there's liability,
| but that's usually a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the
| potential marketing effects of safety incidents.
|
| To Boeing, planes need to be safe enough to not cause
| airlines to cancel orders or result in excessive fines from
| the government. Any additional safety is waste. The optimal
| number of people killed is higher than 0 when trying to
| maximize profits.
|
| As Mike Rowe says, "Safety Third"[1]. The need to make money
| is first, then willingness to assume risk, and finally
| safety.
|
| [1] https://mikerowe.com/2022/03/the-origin-of-safety-third/
| hef19898 wrote:
| Thanks for providing a glimps at why those Boeing fuck-ups
| happened... Safety third, are ypu kidding me? I just hope
| you don't work on stuff that can kill people...
| atoav wrote:
| Yeah it isn't. _If_ you are a monopolist. If you are not a lack
| of safety culture is a gift to your competition:
| https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/01/10/airbus-shares-s...
|
| That being said, I think the purchase of several commercial
| aircraft liners (and the pilot/crew training to go with it) is
| more than anything a true long term commitment. Safety is one
| thing, reliability is another. Boeings shtick always was to go
| for old and tested technology. That had some appeal. But
| nowadays you can't help but feel that Airbus went with the
| times and evolved what planes are while Boeing forgot how to do
| them.
| whitej125 wrote:
| 20 years ago nobody thought there'd be a another US automaker
| beyond the big three (Ford, GM, Chrysler)... yet today here we
| are with Tesla and a list of others.
|
| Are there any other US companies today that could ostensibly be
| viable alternatives to Boeing's spot 20 years from now?
|
| Electric-first-and-only was the differentiator for Tesla vs big
| three... what differentiator will it be in the aero industry?
| wand3r wrote:
| Boom is taking a Tesla approach to aerospace focusing on high
| end first with a Concord replacement. I am sure there are
| others working their way up the value chain
| hef19898 wrote:
| Boom still isn't dead yet?
| ghaff wrote:
| Boom has all these fans on sites like this--and to be clear
| I wish Boom well--who also wouldn't consider spending $10K
| for a comfortable lie-flat seating flight from the US to
| Europe.
| notatoad wrote:
| Boom won't die until the saudis give up on supersonic
| flight as a method to increase the demand for oil.
| consumer451 wrote:
| Has Boom found a new engine supplier yet?
| buildsjets wrote:
| Every major and minor engine manufacturer punted, so now
| they're making their own.
| https://boomsupersonic.com/symphony
|
| Hired an experienced propulsion guy away from Boeing to run
| the show. https://boomsupersonic.com/team-members/scott-
| powell
|
| They are not going to be able to do it, my opinion. There
| are very few people in the world who have deep experience
| doing 3D CFD on supersonic turbofans, I've talked to a few
| of them and none have been headhunted. The will need good
| analysis work, they are asking for a LOT out of a single
| stage fan. They certainly will not have the metallurgical
| research and manufacturing technologies of the engine
| manufacturers to use. But best of luck to Scott, his
| Porsche GT3 was getting kind of old and needs to be
| upgraded to the latest model.
| ghaff wrote:
| I wish them the best but, even if they can get the
| technology to more or less work, the economics and
| regulatory environment are pretty tough.
|
| At the end of the day, it's almost certainly going to be
| an expensive airline ticket and even if United was
| (rather inexplicably) touting Boom in their advertising,
| I'm not sure how many customers there are to pay out-of-
| pocket for supersonic flights that are likely to be a
| premium over current top-end seating. I'd love to zip
| over to Europe a lot faster from the East Coast of the
| US. But I'm not going to pay as much to save time as I
| would for the rest of my trip.
| hef19898 wrote:
| If they hired a _propulsion_ guy from Boeing to develop a
| _new super-sonic engine_ , Boom fucked up. Boeing, same
| for Airbus, doesn't develop or built engines, let alone
| super sonic ones.
|
| But dor sure, said Boeing hire will be royaly paid for
| his service, good for them. And good for Boom, a
| prominent Boeing hire will make fundraising so much
| easier.
|
| But sure, as if building a new commercial airframe
| manufacturer isn't hard enough, becoming a new jet engine
| manufacturer on top of that is a winning strategy...
| buildsjets wrote:
| In the specific case of Mr. Powell, I would agree that
| his skill set is primarily in the management of procuring
| and integrating of new engines from engine vendors into
| new airframes, and in the detail design of engine
| accessories and externals, and he is not experienced in
| the design of internal turbo machinery. And that's where
| the high risk for Boom is.
|
| However you would be completely mistaken to think that
| Boeing, and Airbus, and my friends down there with
| Embraer, do not have people who actively pursue and
| develop the core technologies needed to develop, analyze,
| and test all types of turbine engines, even if they do
| not result in market products. It is a necessary tool in
| order to evaluate offerings from the different
| competitive engine vendors. And at the senior level of
| engineering, there is basically a revolving door between
| the airframe manufacturers, the engine manufacturers, and
| a few of the high-level engineering focused airlines.
| People are constantly jumping around between them, there
| is a lot of cross-pollination going on.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Yeah, I know some of those engineering managers. They all
| work best in well-established, large orgs with people
| knowing the ins and outs of their jobs.
|
| The last time they actually developed something is quite
| a while ago. And managing engine suppliers, and component
| suppliers only gets you so far in developing the engines
| yourself. And we are talking super sonics ones.
| ghaff wrote:
| Designing airframes isn't easy but aren't really novel.
| This is about coming up with engines that don't have
| noise concerns and have economics that would allow
| airlines to operate aircraft at prices that aren't that
| out of line with current ticket prices. It's not at all
| clear how big the market is for very premium tickets for
| supersonic travel is transatlantic and transpacific has a
| bunch of other range issues.
| consumer451 wrote:
| This is a tangent, but you are well informed in the
| space, and I would love to read your opinion.
|
| There is a new heli player trying to start from clean-
| sheet, called Hill Helicopters.[0] They are building a
| sleek new carbon fiber fuselage, but what I am wondering
| about is the fact that they are also making their own
| turbine engine.[1]
|
| I have assumed that their new turbine is the hardest part
| of their plan, am I correct in that assumption? Is it
| crazy, or not crazy, that they are trying to do this
| themselves?
|
| [0] https://www.hillhelicopters.com/
|
| [1] https://www.hillhelicopters.com/gt50-engine
| rafale wrote:
| The barrier of entry is much higher with commercial aviation.
| You can get started with a lousy car but a lousy plane will
| never be acceptable. The MAX fiasco could have killed Boeing.
| Maybe Boom will succeed by getting its feet wet in the
| supersonic flight niche. Time will tell.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Well, you could make a small plane if it's not lousy. Lilium
| and Electra are betting on something like an air taxi niche
| opening up if the fuel savings are worth it:
| https://www.electra.aero/ https://lilium.com/jet
| hef19898 wrote:
| At least Lilium is at least a couple of years, and
| billions, away from having a product they can sell.
| jowea wrote:
| Maybe start with a small plane instead of a lousy plane?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| There's even more government protectionism/capture in plane
| makers than automakers.
|
| It would have to be a horizontal play by an existing company
| with large amounts of capital and relationships, like a
| Lockheed Martin or something.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Maybe one of the private jet manufacturers?
|
| In the US we have Cessna and Gulfstream, and in Canada we have
| Bombardier which designed and sort of made the CSeries/A220 in
| Alabama in conjunction with Airbus.
|
| The whole Bombardier CSeries fiasco was basically Boeing using
| the US government to try to kill Bombardier because they had
| managed to put together a plane that was very competitive with
| with the 737-MAX in a number of categories. The takeaway though
| is that it is possible, with significant government support,
| for a small jet manufacturer to put up a feasible competitor to
| Airbus/Boeing.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| I think you mean Textron and General Dynamics. Cessna and
| Gulfstream haven't been independent companies for 10 and 20
| years, respectively.
| buildsjets wrote:
| Also, they did not "try to kill Bombardier", they did kill
| Bombardier, at least as far as the commercial jet industry
| is concerned. Bombardier does not sort of make the
| CSeries/A220 in Alabama in conjunction with Airbus. The
| CSeries does not exist any more, the A220 is now a 100%
| Airbus program, as of Feb. 2020, Bombardier has zero
| involvement in it.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Bombardier is not dead just their passenger airline jet
| line, they are still making jets, just not the CSeries,
| and nothing for the airline industry.
|
| The Alabama A220 production started while Bombardier was
| still a partner which is why I used past tense "made" and
| "sort of"
| ponector wrote:
| Imagine you've spent 20 billion USD to develop, certify and
| create a production line. How you're going to convince airlines
| to buy hundreds of new planes they have no pilots for, no
| maintenance facilities and no predictions of reliability?
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| Probably the biggest barrier to a new creating a new commercial
| airline manufacturer is that there just aren't that many new
| planes sold each year. There aren't that many customers for
| commercial airplanes, and existing airplanes can last for
| decades when properly maintained.
|
| Combine all that with the inherently high costs of running a
| commercial airline manufacturer, and there just isn't enough
| demand to support more companies in the space. Changing that
| would require huge technical breakthroughs, or fundamental
| changes to how passenger air travel works. Neither of those
| seem to be likely in the near future.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Another differentiation for Tesla was not having the dealership
| model. Perhaps the things not acknowledged are more important
| than those that are.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| It might even be Tesla again.
|
| Somebody, somewhere will make an electric jet that is good
| enough. It will be very destructive for the old manufacturers,
| for old airports, and for many airliners. It won't need the
| long airways we are used to so we will likely get more point-
| to-point like travel to/from city centers (multiple sites for
| bigger cities).
|
| Longer-distance travel will still remain the remit of
| traditional jets -- but they will have a much smaller market so
| there won't be much R&D, except through state subsidies and
| military contracts.
| redRabbit99 wrote:
| China was able to create brand new planes in 2020, they're not
| air maxes but smaller units. I believe their new value and sale
| has undercut the Boeing market, and significantly so, in a way
| that basically undermines the maintenance value of Boeing.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Besides Chinese airliners having nothing to do with Boeings, or
| Airbus, marketshare, what is "maintenance value"?
| redRabbit99 wrote:
| Lol why you say that nothing to do with their market share.
|
| Boeings were grounded in China; while china isn't the only
| market imagine decreasing a lion share of value from the
| largest population country? sure it won't hit hard but it can
| hit enough to topple something... and seemingly it slightly
| has.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/01/24/boeing-
| delivers-737-max-...
|
| And its just that, the maintenance value I mean literally a
| dent like that in business trickles down to the bottom, that
| Chinese market share loss potentially is felt by the
| engineers and maintenance workers, not the CEOs, etc.
| cameroncf wrote:
| Isn't this just confirming a seemingly widely held opinion that
| the safety culture started to break down after 1997 after the
| merger with McDonnell Douglas?
|
| See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26417095
| beowulfey wrote:
| >Isn't this just confirming a seemingly widely held opinion
|
| Yes-- this represents formal acknowledgement by a regulatory
| agency. The hope is that agency can now use this formalization
| to enforce change within Boeing.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| And, what, undo capitalism? The motivating forces here are
| profit, plain and simple. I've come to think that it's not
| only probable, but _inevitable_ that any growth-oriented,
| profit-motivated company (read: any company) will reach a
| point that their only remaining growth path is to undermine
| quality.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Capitalism in practice is an artificial environment. People
| speak of it as if it is a force of nature, but anywhere it
| is put into practice it is put into practice in the context
| of norms and regulations. Undo capitalism is a conversation
| terminating tactic.
|
| If the Jack Welch style of capitalism is failing, it can be
| changed. For example, there is a national Labor relations
| board because we don't do this anarchically.
| masklinn wrote:
| Capitalism is a tool, not a force of nature*.
|
| It can be channeled, directed and mitigated. That is what
| regulations and regulatory agencies do. Although of course
| you need to watch the watchers so they don't get captured.
|
| * and even if it were, we channel, direct, and mitigate
| forces of nature all the time, if not always to great
| success, or without consequences
| bumby wrote:
| > _of course you need to watch the watchers_
|
| I don't cut Boeing much slack, but some of this also
| falls on the FAA for delegating certain oversight
| activities to the manufacturer. I assume they do it for
| manpower reasons (ie there just aren't enough FAA
| employees to do the job sufficiently).
| masklinn wrote:
| I don't think there's any need to cut Boeing any flack to
| point out that the regulators did fail to do due
| diligence.
|
| It is understandable that regulators would take a lighter
| hand to a company which has shown good ethics -- which
| was historically the case of Boeing (more of an issue if
| that is because of not being able to handle the load),
| it's a problem if they go completely hands off.
|
| I don't think the FAA is the sole culprit here either,
| we've not heard much of non-american regulators. While it
| makes sense that the FAA would be the primary regulator
| for Boeing, that regulators would cooperate
| internationally, and that non-primary regulators would
| have to be careful e.g. around the risk of being called
| out for trade restrictions, I still feel non-US
| regulators should have been a lot more involved with and
| suspicious of Boeing following the MCAS mess.
| bumby wrote:
| One of the looming risks is that other nations lose faith
| in the FAA to certify their aircraft. Particularly
| smaller nations, which, in effect, inherit the FAA
| certification as safe instead of levying their own.
| iskander wrote:
| Exceptions so far are Novo Nordisk and CostCo. Not sure if
| there are many others at scale.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| > And, what, undo capitalism?
|
| No, they just have to make following a safety culture less
| expensive than not. For example, by conducting proper
| audits. If not following safety requirements means that new
| planes are not certified and the others get grounded before
| it is fixed, then it is going to get more costly for Boeing
| than doing it right to begin with.
|
| That's what regulations are for.
|
| And undermining quality is often not profitable. That's
| because their customers also want to maximize their
| profits, and a bad plane, one that doesn't last, requires
| frequent repairs, is unreliable, has a bad reputation with
| passengers, etc... isn't going to be very valuable.
| Customers will pay more for a good plane that offers better
| returns on investment. This is the same for any B2B
| company. Consumers are a bit easier to fool, especially
| with good advertising (which is also expensive), but at
| some point, they too will realize that a brand is
| worthless.
| calf wrote:
| This is reducing culture to money, which I imagine the
| safety culture theorists anticipated a layperson,
| misinformed understanding of it.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Short term profits. Literally nobody gives a shit anymore
| what happens to a company ten years in the future.
|
| Outsourcing and building the Max fast led to good numbers
| at the annual shareholder meeting. Arguably it still does
| because what is anyone going to do? Buy Airbus? They have
| waiting lists too.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| > And, what, undo capitalism?
|
| No, just make it very costly to have quality lapses.
| Capitalism takes care of the rest. When it's effective
| government regulation makes companies pay for costs that
| would otherwise be externalized.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Well, how about, just enforce laws already passed by
| congress? Monopolies are illegal. They have been for 100
| years and it has yet to "undo capitalism."
| bbor wrote:
| Undo American capitalism :). A true capitalism would have
| strong regulations to prevent this sort of thing, and
| companies that recognize that making bad products is bad
| for themselves and society in the long run.
|
| That said, I hope to god you're a socialist lol. The stance
| "capitalism inevitably leads to corner cutting, but it's
| still the best we've got" would have the potential to
| literally break my mind with consternation.
| bbor wrote:
| Does anyone else share my wish that the result of this
| investigation was "poof no more Boeing"? I don't understand
| why corporations can be fundamentally flawed and keep going,
| where a person in that situation would be prosecuted as a
| criminal. If Boeing has a bad safety culture because they
| keep investing unbelievable sums of money into stock buybacks
| and dividends, so much so that they don't even have
| _reporting_ culture... I don't think they deserve a second
| chance, and frankly I think the shareholders deserve jail
| time so I really don't care if they lose some money.
|
| Yes, I know some pension fund somewhere is invested in
| Boeing. No, I don't care. Will we ever solve corruption and
| climate change if we refuse to actually change our ways?
| TheCondor wrote:
| Confirms some serious issues in culture.
|
| Not sure if confirms the cause of those issues or where/when
| the infection took hold.
| hinkley wrote:
| Really started when Congress decided they were supporting too
| many aerospace companies and some asshat got the idea that
| forcing some of them to merge would be a good idea.
|
| Spreading manufacturing all over the US is also more to do with
| getting kore congressional districts "pregnant" than with
| national defense. In war you want multiple, as in redundant,
| supply lines so if one is cut, you can source materiel from
| somewhere else. What we have is multiple, as in single point of
| failure, supply lines. Lose one and everything collapses.
| basseed wrote:
| widely held as you read it in one post on HN?
| zettabomb wrote:
| Widely held by many in the industry, including those working
| at Boeing.
| cameroncf wrote:
| It's been covered for at least the last 5 years by many
| reputable news orgs. That HN link (you looked at the link
| right?) includes several refs, and a Google search dozens
| more.
| schainks wrote:
| Yes, this video also had a great historical breakdown and
| context about what's going on:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URoVKPVDKPU
|
| Everything Wendover Productions makes is so helpful!
| ardaoweo wrote:
| This is the real problem with Boeing. The MCAS design fiasco and
| the door plug falling off were not isolated incidents, but
| symptoms of broader issues. I can only wonder what remaining
| hidden flaws aircraft currently in the air may have, and what
| they might cause in the future. Recently I had the option to fly
| on either 737MAX or 20 year old A319, and chose the latter option
| simply because I have more faith in safety culture at Airbus.
| hef19898 wrote:
| If the Aircraft is 20 years old, you should worry a lot more
| about the airline's safety culture than the manufacturer's.
| Just saying.
| slices wrote:
| https://avgeekery.com/oldest-flying-airliners-in-the-
| united-...
| ardaoweo wrote:
| As long as maintenance is done properly there's nothing wrong
| with old aircraft, there are very well defined maintenance
| programs that specify which parts should be checked / changed
| and when. The airline in question is among the oldest in EU,
| and has an excellent safety record.
| rapatel0 wrote:
| Boeing is another in the long list of companies that were taken
| over by process and finance people and driven into the ground
| with short term thinking largely centered on reducing cost-
| structure and financial engineering.
|
| Elon has a great diatribe describing how the big automakers
| largely broke down and outsourced most parts manufacturing just
| became system integrators and customer support. In the short
| term, this is great for the bottom line, but it hollows out the
| engineering culture and make it extremely difficult to innovate.
| Imagine trying to get 100s suppliers to make small tweaks to each
| of their parts. Also, imagine when you need multiple suppliers to
| work together to build (NDAs, IP agreements, etc). You get buried
| in bullshit
|
| Great companies are generally lead by R&D (product, science,
| engineering) with strong finance / process acting as gravity to
| keep the company grounded & functioning. When finance / process
| take over, then gravity will dominate and you crash
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Ironic for Elon to be complaining about the bureaucracy of
| automakers and how it drags down production quality.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| Elon fan boy here. My Tesla has been a pretty solid car
| compared to any Crysler or GM car that I've owned before.
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| You should try owning a Toyota
| psunavy03 wrote:
| . . . who had their own major scandal about self-
| accelerating vehicles.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| Which mysteriously only affected the US -- while the
| Toyota's remained extremely safe cars there.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| yeah, you should've switched to any number of japanese
| imports.
| dahart wrote:
| I used to think the same, but I'm not sure sure anymore
| after having a Honda CRV completely die on me last year
| when it was ~5 years old, well maintained, and lightly
| driven. It may have been the electronics design that
| prevented any mechanics from being able to diagnose what
| was wrong. There was a recall on the air compressor that
| might have contributed. Can't be sure, but the electrical
| systems all stopped functioning due to an unknown
| problem. We tried to have it serviced over and over
| again, paid to replace many parts that were not the cause
| and did not fix anything, only to have the issue persist
| and then one day (on the way to the shop for another
| service) the timing belt melted and took out a number of
| other parts with it. After $5k in repairs, it ran fine
| for a few weeks and then the electronics shut down again
| over an unknown problem. Honda at least recognized this
| was design failure and ended up covering some of the
| repair costs, but I couldn't get rid of this lemon fast
| enough.
|
| Personally, I suspect we've recently entered a new age of
| cars that depend on electronics much much more heavily
| than before, and that we do not have great data yet on
| the reliability of these software systems, and that
| Japanese mechanical engineering advantages of yesteryear
| don't necessarily mean they have good software, nor does
| it compete with bad software.
| coliveira wrote:
| Well, if you compare to Chrysler or GM, anything will do.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Aerospace is all about process and safety so.
|
| And hell, Elon almost ruined Tesla with his drive to over-
| automate manufacturing.
|
| Getting to work 100s of suppliers, not all of which are
| directly managed by the OEM, together is happening all day,
| every day in all industries building hardware.
|
| Seriously, HNs ignorance when it comes to real engineering and
| manufacturing is really frustrating.
| dpflan wrote:
| What would be good resources to learn more about "real
| engineering and manufacturing" to help educate the community?
| beacon294 wrote:
| Sorry that knowledge is restricted to real engineers. /s
| hef19898 wrote:
| Any book about basic engineering is a good start, 101
| course materials. Also, people with a mechanical,
| electrical, manufacturing, industrial, aerospace or other
| engineering background. Some of us are also on HN.
| chx wrote:
| > Aerospace is all about process and safety so.
|
| As an aside, this is so much so the often used phrase
| "aerospace grade" whatever, especially on Kickstarters is
| just bull. There's nothing special in the materials, what
| they are concerned about is the ability to track every piece
| to where it comes from.
| applied_heat wrote:
| And be confident it is what it is meant to be, and meet the
| standards it is meant to meet
| hef19898 wrote:
| One of the first thing an old hand told me in my first
| days on the job, in aerospace, was: If you have a part,
| but have no paper work you can match against the part
| that tells you what it is, you can throw the part away.
| So, never loose documentation.
|
| I took that to heart. Took a case of a switcheroo, mixing
| items that _looked_ similar but aren 't, to really drive
| the point home.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Well, some of the materials used _are_ special: aluminium
| alloys, titanoum alloyw, heat treatment, carbon fibers...
| zettabomb wrote:
| They're standard alloys with special process controls.
| "Aerospace grade" aluminum is commonly just 2024.
| "Aerospace grade" titanium is often 6Al-4V. What makes
| them special isn't the alloy at all but things like
| traceability, continuous monitoring and testing of
| critical material properties, and supply chain.
| hef19898 wrote:
| And you are sure about that? Because that would mean I
| purchased a lot of the wrong raw materials in my life,
| and if so I really, really should tell my collegues in
| engineering, procurement and quality control about it.
| zettabomb wrote:
| Pretty sure, considering I work in aerospace. Can you
| name any alloys or materials you've used which are in
| some way specific to aerospace?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Not anymore, as it is quite a while I bought them. After
| all, it was just a P/N. Given that we had a full blown
| lab doing samples for all raw materials we bought to make
| sure tze alloy, heat treament and other properties were
| correct, yes, it definetly was different alloys. Quite a
| few actually.
|
| Depends on the actual use case of course: requirements
| for safety critical parts are higher than for less
| critical parts, say part connecting rotor blades to the
| rotor head had higher requirements than the door handle
| (both which were actual titanium in one case, and please
| don't ask why a door handle would be titanium to begin
| with...).
|
| Generally so, to come back to your question:
|
| I remember three different titanium alloys with different
| heat treatment we used back then. And at least five
| different alumium alloys. The Titanium ones were
| primarily aerospace, and export controlled depending in
| which form you bought it. And one particular steel alloy,
| not aerospace specific but also export controlled because
| it was dual use.
| zettabomb wrote:
| I think I see what you're saying - however I'm not
| hearing anything indicating a different aerospace-
| specific _material_ , but rather aerospace-specific
| _process_. The raw stock with certs has a different P /N
| than that without certs, but not it's not a different
| material. For instance, we might procure aluminum 7075,
| which has a published spec in the form of ASTM B209 (and
| several others, this is one I've seen called out in
| drawings commonly). 7075 is available in multiple
| different tempers - you can get 7075-O (not heat-
| treated), 7075-T6, 7075-T651, and a few other less
| commonly used ones. When used for aerospace, that
| material will generally come with a cert from an
| independent test lab showing that a specimen from the
| batch meets the yield strength, ultimate tensile
| strength, yield at rupture, composition, and other
| critical properties. At the end of the day, the piece of
| round bar or sheet is the same thing you'd purchase
| otherwise, but you've paid quite a bit extra to be SURE
| that it's exactly what you expect. The same applies to
| steel, titanium, nickel alloys like Inconel or Monel,
| tungsten, magnesium, and pretty much everything else I
| can think of.
|
| Following procurement, we might do in-house testing
| before machining (composition with XRF, physical
| properties with a tensile tester), possibly our own heat
| treatment (e.g. 13-8PH, 15-5PH, 17-4PH are "precipitation
| hardening" steels, generally delivered soft), and surface
| treatment (passivation, conversion coating) before
| delivering a finished product. None of this is unique to
| aerospace either, although it's certainly _unlikely_ you
| 'd want to spend the money for it otherwise.
|
| So yes, you procure a different item, possibly from a
| different supplier, but physically there's unlikely to be
| any difference in my experience. The exception I'm aware
| of would be electronic components, particularly
| semiconductors, which are manufactured using different
| processes for radiation hardening (e.g. sapphire
| substrate). Export control like ITAR/EAR aren't really
| about aerospace but rather restrictions imposed by the US
| Government.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Of course there is no "aerospace only" alloy. There are a
| whole bunch of specialized alloys that get primarily used
| in aerospace so, and those are a far cry from your
| average construction material alloys (those get used to,
| but pose their own kinds of challenges). That's the whole
| point. Also, P/N were internal, of course the supplier
| had different PNs, including or excluding certificates
| and such things.
|
| And before some asks, no, those inventories, the ones
| with and without certificates and paper work, never get
| mixed. That they don't is actualy audited.
|
| If go away from metalic materials, there is only a
| limited number of suppliers for aerospace grade carbon
| fibres: Torray and two others I can't remember the names.
| And those fibres actually are different from the non-
| aerospace ones in some cases, while in others they quite
| similar to the non-aerspace ones technically.
|
| Overall I think we agree so. And yes, people tend to
| oversell the "aerspace grade" stuff. As they do with
| "mil-spec".
|
| ITAR is a pain in the ass, on top of being a US
| government thing not limited to aerospace.
|
| Surface treatment is tricky, as a special process (for QA
| purposes, those have rigorous standards) they take ages
| to get certified.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Teslas are perfectly fine vehicles with by far the most
| impressive software technology. But I wouldn't exactly hold
| them up as being particularly high quality, especially compared
| to Japanese and Korean automobiles.
| AmVess wrote:
| No better or worse than US or EU cars manufacturers, all of
| whom have been doing this a LOT longer than Tesla.
| spamizbad wrote:
| I would say there are definitely fit-and-finish areas where
| they lag behind both (eg: panel alignment). That's not
| really around reliability tho.
| amluto wrote:
| > far the most impressive software technology.
|
| I find it somewhat impressive in the sense of "wow, they put
| a _lot_ of not-really-necessary software in here and it still
| manages to mostly work reliably."
|
| But the actual critical software parts the make it work _as a
| car_ are not, in my book, particularly impressive. My first
| car's ECU glitched once in the entire time I had it, and I
| think it was actually quite unusual for a car of that model
| to have an ECU glitch at all. My Tesla regularly has glitches
| that affect the ability to start the car or operate systems
| that really ought to work all the time.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| >Elon has a great diatribe describing how the big automakers
| largely broke down and outsourced most parts manufacturing
|
| For a company that purports to be an energy storage and
| generation business (with cars as an initial application),
| Tesla remains hugely dependent on their own suppliers.
| Panasonic occupies a major chunk of Tesla's own Gigafactory and
| has repeatedly delayed the production of new cells [0], [1].
|
| [0] https://electrek.co/2024/01/15/panasonic-to-soon-make-new-
| ba... [1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/panasonic-delays-
| producti...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Panosonic is trying to keep up with Tesla. There are
| technical challenges with the 4680 cell manufacturing process
| they are attempting to resolve that are leading to suboptimal
| yields.
|
| https://cleantechnica.com/2023/12/24/tesla-4680-battery-
| prod...
| amluto wrote:
| I'm no expert, but I do recall Tesla saying, at the
| beginning, that they were using 18650 cells because they
| were widely available. Well over a decade later, the major
| battery makers are producing prismatic cells in volume, and
| Tesla is still working on their fancy new cylindrical cell.
| I wonder if they're doing this is due to some kind of
| design inertia at this point.
|
| Right now, I can buy US-assembled complete energy storage
| systems (not necessarily at volume), _retail_ , using
| prismatic LFP cells, for a lower price per unit energy than
| the Tesla Megapack.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Tesla uses prismatic cells as well. You are no expert (as
| you said), and of course you can buy your own storage
| cheaper than turnkey utility scale systems. Energy
| developers aren't building their own systems; they cut
| Tesla a check and install the asset (orchestrated by
| Autobidder).
|
| https://insideevs.com/news/542064/tesla-model3-lfp-
| battery-p...
|
| > Tesla uses LFP cells supplied by a Chinese manufacturer
| - CATL, which has basically become a strategic partner
| with a contract for the next several years.
|
| > Because the LFP chemistry does not offer as high energy
| density as NCA or NCM, Tesla uses LFP only in the
| standard range versions of its cars (produced in Shanghai
| and soon globally). LFP will be used also in Tesla's
| energy storage systems.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| This seems to confirm the initial point, which is that
| Tesla mainly outsources its most critical ingredient
| (batteries) to outside suppliers. Suppliers that are,
| incidentally, increasingly competing directly with its
| main lines of business. That might be ok in the car
| industry, where people will pay a premium for brand
| names. Seems bad if your goal is to dominate energy
| storage.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| No one builds energy storage at the rate Tesla does, so
| while this risk keeps being surfaced on HN ("but what
| about..."), until there is material movement from
| competitors, "meh." If it's so easy, by all means, do it.
| But talk is relatively cheap.
|
| https://www.energy-storage.news/tesla-deployed-
| nearly-4gwh-o...
|
| https://www.energy-storage.news/tesla-deployed-6-5gwh-
| energy...
|
| https://carboncredits.b-cdn.net/wp-
| content/uploads/2023/07/T... (Source:
| https://carboncredits.com/tesla-413m-megapacks-
| revolutionize...)
|
| > Such tremendous growth has been particularly attributed
| to ramping up Tesla's Megapack production capacity in its
| recently built 40 GWh Megafactory in California. The
| company aims to produce 10,000 Megapacks each year in
| this factory.
|
| > Earlier this year, Tesla also revealed plans to
| construct another 40 GWh Megafactory in Shanghai, China
| to meet the robust demand for its energy storage systems.
| Construction will start later this year.
|
| https://electrek.co/2023/12/22/tesla-launches-project-
| build-...
|
| The global market for energy storage is enormous,
| approaching almost half a trillion dollars by 2030.
|
| https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documen
| ts/...
|
| https://www.precedenceresearch.com/energy-storage-
| systems-ma...
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| I'm as excited about this progress as anyone. But (1)
| Tesla's Megapack business isn't objectively that big
| compared to its other businesses, (2) while it may be big
| in the future, that assumes they don't face serious
| competition from cheaper suppliers, (3) Tesla currently
| seem to be hugely reliant on Chinese suppliers and
| factories to build its storage, with no immediate plan to
| change this, and (4) _the Chinese government and battery
| sector has made clear that it intends to dominate these
| industries at any cost._
|
| Saying "I'm not worried about this" is like saying you're
| not worried about a giant truck that's speeding directly
| at you. The question I'm asking in this thread is whether
| Tesla has a plan to avoid getting hit by it.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I assume their plan is to continue to have the business
| run by the human equivalent of an AI reward maximizer. It
| has worked for them so far to have obsessive people in
| key leadership positions, and I would expect it to
| continue to work. Without material non public information
| from Tesla internal, hard to say either way, we can only
| speculate. Past performance does not guarantee future
| returns, but still valuable signal.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| > _Great companies are generally lead by R &D (product,
| science, engineering) with strong finance / process acting as
| gravity to keep the company grounded & functioning. When
| finance / process take over, then gravity will dominate and you
| crash_
|
| But to continue the metaphor, a great company will have enough
| forward momentum that at any time they can pull back on the
| stick, relying on inertia in their supply chain, designs,
| customer name recognition, and existing capital assets to
| briefly zip almost straight upwards really, really fast for a
| short amount of time. If you want an upwards trajectory for 100
| years, it won't work, you'll soon stall, but if you want an
| upwards trajectory for the next quarter it works phenomenally
| well!
|
| The root of the problem, I think, is that it's really hard to
| measure long-term assets like culture and trust, but really
| easy to game short-term metrics by dumping long-term assets.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| This ignores the reality that most customers will buy the car /
| take the flight that is $5 cheaper and don't care about any of
| that.
|
| Great engineering culture doesn't mean a lot if can't sell your
| product.
| jewayne wrote:
| Yeah, those 737 MAXes are selling like HOTCAKES these days!
| SoftTalker wrote:
| They will be next year, and customers will be back on Kayak
| and Expedia sorting by price and clicking the top result to
| book.
| geraneum wrote:
| > big automakers largely broke down and outsourced most parts
| manufacturing just became system integrators and customer
| support
|
| Apple outsources manufacturing and it's doing just fine. Has
| not hallowed out their engineering yet.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Apple very famously maintains incredible control over their
| partners' and their process.
| peteradio wrote:
| Why did the engineers allow this? They had no power? Why? I
| have a general sense that many engineers take the position of
| "tell me what to do and I will only ask why X times." I think
| its a self-serving but ultimately shortsighted position like a
| tragedy of the commons. Did engineers actually push back on
| these decisions? "I walk" etc? At some point a man needs to be
| willing to go back to the dirt with a hoe in hand when his
| principles are subverted. I get it, you can find yourself in a
| position of a slow moving landslide and have to deal with
| things related to sunk costs in a boiling bucket and your
| companion is only a frog. Still, where does this lead in the
| long term? Engineers should see themselves as the brick and
| mortar of a nation not some extractive force in a financialized
| environment. What are you leaving your(the) children?
|
| I was reading a story about the decisions made by miners in UP
| Michigan in 1912. You know what they did when shit sucked? They
| walked and did something else for 2 years. They let the
| equipment rot with intent going as far as to coerce the machine
| maintainers to cease and desist with machine hibernation
| procedures.
| dmoy wrote:
| > I was reading a story about the decisions made by miners in
| UP Michigan in 1912. You know what they did when shit sucked?
| They walked and did something else for 2 years. They let the
| equipment rot with intent going
|
| Jesus, or what the miners in the Appalachians did in 1912.
| After the mining company refused to deal with a unionized
| workforce, they were replaced by armed guards. The miners got
| kicked out of there housing, etc. So in response, the miners
| formed a militia and went to war with the company, like
| literal war with guns. They got steamrolled by the state
| guard. But eventually that got them to negotiate a 9 hour
| workday.
|
| Then they did it again 10 years later, except that time they
| got steamrolled by the US military, and then the feds threw
| hundreds in prison for treason.
| dathinab wrote:
| > The panel expressed concern that the confusion might discourage
| employees from reporting what they see as safety problems.
|
| so who is opening bets that this was at least partially
| intentional?
|
| Quite often when there are overly complicated reporting pipelines
| and people not knowing how to use them is because the company
| doesn't want you to report because that leaves a paper trail
| which could screw them over if they ignore it and something goes
| wrong.
| hinkley wrote:
| Dieselgate is an example of what happens when managers are
| rewarded for achieving goals they haven't been given the
| resources to achieve. When you promote people for achieving the
| impossible without investigating _how_ they achieved it, that's
| how you end up with superfund sites, pollution, or giant safety
| recalls.
|
| They didn't do what you asked. They found a way to cheat. And
| worse, their coworkers and reports know what they did, and see
| them getting rewarded. The "morally flexible" copy, and the boy
| scouts leave, or burn out.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Dieselgate started as far up the top of VWs fod chain as you
| can get: the CEO handpicked and protected by the god father
| himself, Ferdinand Piech. Well possible that Piech was
| involved in all of that as well. It started as a deliberate
| decision to limit AdBlue tank volume to safe money, and
| extend AdBlue usage to the point drivers didn't have to
| replenish themselves between inspections, which allowed VW to
| make more money on service.
|
| That cheating was not engineers cutting corners to please
| management, it was engineers at the very top of management
| deliberately ordering the organization to cheat.
| hinkley wrote:
| I think you have a different story.
|
| The TDIs involved with Dieselgate shipped with no adBlue
| tank. That wasn't added until 2014 at the earliest. They
| also detected if they were being run in inspection mode,
| and adjusted the fuel mixture to avoid exceeding
| particulate emissions. They may also not have been telling
| people to refill the tanks on cars that had them, but
| actively circumventing EEA/EPA compliance checks was what
| infuriated governments.
| hammock wrote:
| The deficiencies found in the report were in Just Culture and
| Reporting Culture.
|
| The five Key Elements of Safety Culture are:
|
| 1) Informed Culture- the organization collects and analyses
| relevant data, and actively disseminates safety information.
|
| 2) Reporting Culture- cultivating an atmosphere where people have
| confidence to report safety concerns without fear of blame.
| Employees must know that confidentiality will be maintained and
| that the information they submit will be acted upon, otherwise
| they will decide that there is no benefit in their reporting.
|
| 3) Learning Culture- an organization is able to learn from its
| mistakes and make changes. It will also ensure that people
| understand the SMS processes at a personal level.
|
| 4) Just Culture- errors and unsafe acts will not be punished if
| the error was unintentional. However, those who act recklessly or
| take deliberate and unjustifiable risks will still be subject to
| disciplinary action.
|
| 5) Flexible Culture- the organization and the people in it are
| capable of adapting effectively to changing demands.
|
| Sources:
|
| https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/Sec103_ExpertPanelReview_Report...
|
| https://www.airsafety.aero/safety-information-and-reporting/...
| burnerburnson wrote:
| > errors and unsafe acts will not be punished if the error was
| unintentional.
|
| No sane organization would ever implement this. If someone
| repeatedly makes mistakes, they're going to get fired even if
| the mistakes are unintentional. Anything else is going to cause
| more safety issues in the long-term as inadequate employees are
| allowed to proliferate.
| byteknight wrote:
| Furthering the insinuation that everyone has the right to
| work every job. Sometimes people suck at their job.
| error_logic wrote:
| As your sibling comments mentioned, there's a difference
| between giving a chance for someone to learn from a single
| mistake without punishment, and allowing them to make the
| same mistake twice without taking matters out of their
| hands after.
|
| If it's a really critical role, the training will have
| realistic enough simulation for them to make countless
| mistakes before they leave the training environment. Then
| you can assess their level of risk safely.
| hinkley wrote:
| This whole thread is missing the fact that the NTSB had a
| theory that transparency leads to safer airplanes, they
| tried it, and it works. People hesitate to self-report
| when it comes with punishment (fines, demotions, or just
| loss of face among peers). You need a formal "safe space"
| where early reporting is rewarded and late reporting is
| discouraged.
|
| Safety is a lot about trust, and there is more than one
| kind of trust. At a minimum: are you capable of doing
| this thing I need you to do? _Will_ you do this thing I
| need you to do?
| zettabomb wrote:
| It's not just the NTSB, it's part of things like the
| Toyota Production System. There's ample evidence to show
| both that punishment discourages safety and that lack of
| punishment encourages safety, across multiple industries.
| nyrikki wrote:
| Yes this is cross industry best practices.
|
| Goodhart's law also applies, as in the case of the edoor
| bolts, Spirit intentionally bypassed safety controls to
| meet performance metrics.
|
| The Mars Climate Orbiter is another example. While unit
| conversion was the scapegoat, the real cause of the crash
| is that when people noticed that there was a problem they
| were dismissed.
|
| The Andon cord from the Toyota Production System wasn't
| present due to culture problems.
|
| Same thing with impact scores in software reducing
| quality and customer value.
|
| If you intentionally or through metrics incentivize
| cutting corners it will be the cost of quality and
| safety.
|
| I am glad they called out the culture problem here. This
| is not something that is fixable under more controls, it
| requires cultural changes.
| StableAlkyne wrote:
| > The Mars Climate Orbiter is another example. While unit
| conversion was the scapegoat, the real cause of the crash
| is that when people noticed that there was a problem they
| were dismissed.
|
| Challenger too. Multiple engineers warned them about the
| O-rings. They weren't just ignored, but were openly
| mocked by the NASA leadership.
| (https://allthatsinteresting.com/space-shuttle-
| challenger-dis...)
|
| A decade later a senior engineer at NASA warned about a
| piece of foam striking Space Shuttle Columbia and
| requested they use existing military satellites to check
| for damage. She was ignored by NASA leadership, and
| following (coincidentally) a report by Boeing concluding
| nothing was wrong, another 7 people were killed by a
| piss-poor safety culture.
| (https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=97600&page=1)
| ethanbond wrote:
| But but but what about my _intuition_ and _gotcha
| questions_ about how this could never work in practice?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think there is more nuance to it than that. Not
| everything is a mistake, not every mistake is
| recoverable, and not all skills are trainable.
|
| The fundamental goal is to distinguish between
| recoverable errors and those that are indicative of poor
| employee-role fit.
| nyrikki wrote:
| Mistakes are the problem, as they will always happen.
|
| The point is to build a culture where you value teamwork
| and adjust and learn from failures.
|
| This isn't an individual team problem, this is an
| organization problem.
|
| It is impossible to hire infallible, all knowing
| employees.
|
| But it is quite possible to enable communication and to
| learn from pas mistakes.
|
| When you silence employees due to a fear of retribution
| bad things happen.
|
| People need to feel safe with calling out the systemic
| problems that led to a failure. If that ends up being the
| wrong mixture of skills on a team or bad communication
| within a team that is different.
|
| Everything in this report was a mistake, and not due to
| gross incompetence from a single person.
|
| The E door bolts as an example was directly attributed to
| metrics that punished people if they didn't bypass
| review. The delivery timelines and defect rates were what
| management placed value on over quality and safety.
|
| Consider the prisoner delema, which is resolved by
| communication, not choosing a better partner.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I don't disagree with what you said about this instance,
| but I'm trying to push back on the knee jerk sentiment
| that there are no bad employees only bad systems- There
| are both. cultures that are too permissive of bad actors
| degrade the system.
|
| Part of maintaining quality culture is maintaining red
| lines around integrity.
|
| Like I said above, not all errors are recoverable or
| honest mistakes.
|
| I work in medicine and a classic example would be
| falsifying data. That should always be a red line, not a
| learning opportunity. You can add QA and systemic
| controls, but without out integrity, they are
| meaningless. I have seen places with a culture of
| indifference, where QA is checked out and doesn't do
| their job either.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| Just culture doesn't prevent you from firing someone who
| makes repeated mistakes.
|
| In fact, Just Culture in itself provides the justification
| for this. As the next line says "However, those who act
| recklessly or take deliberate and unjustifiable risks will
| still be subject to disciplinary action". A person who
| repeated makes mistakes is an unjustifiable risk.
| hinkley wrote:
| When a punishment is applied with more deliberation, it can
| also be more severe.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Why is severity desirable? Or if it's not desirable, so
| what?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Severity is desirable iff it's justified. I wouldn't ever
| sign off on a policy that says "you'll be fired for a
| single mistake" (that would be a severity of punishment
| out of proportion to the risk/underperformance).
|
| But a policy that never provided for the possibility of
| termination (insufficient maximum severity) is also not
| desirable.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Severity is desirable iff it's justified.
|
| It's necessary if it's (necessary & efficient &
| justified); it's never desirable IMHO.
|
| Doing severe things because they are justified is just
| acting out on a desire or drive - internal anger - but
| now we can 'justify' the target and feel ok about it.
| Lynch mobs think they are justified.
| buttercraft wrote:
| That's quite a leap from "unintentional" to "repeatedly."
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Not at all: Systemic problems will result in repeated
| errors until the system is changed.
| applied_heat wrote:
| You can really dumb it down to why didn't you follow the
| checklist? If someone makes the same mistake after being
| corrected three times and the proper procedures exist for the
| worker to follow then the safety culture provides the
| structure and justification for their dismissal
| buildsjets wrote:
| No, you really need to smarten it up, and start off by
| making sure that your checklist is correct. Is it the
| correct checklist for the airplane model that you are
| building? Are all the right items on the checklist? Are
| they being done in the correct order? Do you have the
| correct validation/verification steps in your checklist?
| Does your checklist include all the parts that will need to
| be replaced? If the mechanic finds a quality issue while
| working the checklist and a job needs to be re-done, which
| checklists then need to be re-done? What other jobs are
| impacted by the rework?
|
| All indications here (from the NTSB prelim and the widely
| reported whistleblower account) are that during rework for
| a minor manufacturing discrepancy, the mechanics on the
| shop floor followed bad manufacturing planning /
| engineering instructions to-the-letter, then the ball was
| dropped in error handling when the engineering instructions
| did not match the airplane configuration, because Boeing
| was using two different systems of record for error
| handling that did not communicate with each other except
| though manual coordination.
|
| That's not the fault of the front-line assembly worker not
| following a checklist.
| applied_heat wrote:
| I agree with you. If the systems/procedures/checklists
| are bad it is not the fault of a front line worker.
|
| I thought I was replying more to a parent comment
| addressing the inability to people go who repeatedly make
| mistakes, which is acceptable unless they are not
| following procedures.
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| This is just blameless post mortems and many, many many
| places implement this.
|
| There are always going to be some level of "inadequate"
| employees, and also perfectly adequate employees that
| sometimes make mistakes in any organization and if your
| organization requires that no employees ever make mistakes in
| order to operate safely, then you have serious problems.
|
| The purpose of a statement like that is that you don't just
| have a post-mortem that is like: "Our company went off the
| internet because an employee had a typo in a host name. We
| fired the employee and the problem is solved." When in
| reality the problem is that you had a system that allowed a
| typo to go all the way into production.
| error_logic wrote:
| It's like that story of the pilot who, after his refueling
| technician almost caused a crash by using the wrong fuel,
| insisted that he always have that technician because they'd
| never make that mistake again.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| the question is what do you do with the technician after
| the 2nd mistake. that is to say, When does this logic
| break down?
| lucianbr wrote:
| If you implemented some changes so the mistake is caught
| before disastrous consequences, you're already doing
| better. Well enough to let the 2nd one slide. Even the
| 3rd. After that, action seems reasonable. It's no longer
| a mistake, it's a pattern of faulty behavior.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| That is a big IF. At some point it comes down to the
| error type, and if it is a _reasonable /honest_ mistake.
|
| The situation is very different if the fuel cans are hard
| to distinguish vs if the tech is lazy and falsifying
| their checklist.
|
| Underlying any safety culture is a one of integrity. No
| safety culture can tolerate a culture of apathy and
| indifference.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I expect there's precisely 1 safety culture that can
| tolerate a culture of apathy and indifference -- one in
| which no work is ever completed (without infinite
| headcount).
|
| You apply risk mitigation and work verification to
| resolve safety issues.
|
| Then you recursively repeat that to account for
| ineffective performance of the previous level of
| verification.
|
| Ergo, end productivity per employee is directly
| proportional to integrity, as it allows you to relax that
| inefficient infinite (re-)verification.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Exactly! All this talk about man vs system misses the
| point that man is the system designer, operator, and
| component.
|
| This is why Boeing cant just solve their situation with
| more process checks. From the reporting, they are already
| drowning in redundant quality systems and complexity.
| What failed was the human elements.
|
| Someone was gaming the system saying that the doors
| weren't "technically" removed because there was a
| shoelace (or whatever) holding them in place, Quality
| assurance was asleep at the wheel, and management was
| rewarding those behaviors.
|
| Plenty of blame to go around.
| Log_out_ wrote:
| You take him into a boolean tree within a and with
| another employee for quality and put him on a improvement
| plan?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| maybe. or maybe you turn them over to the authorities
| because the 2nd time their lazy and reckless disregard
| killed several people.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Redesign the system again if it's unintentional. It is
| almost impossible to control humans to the degree that
| they never make mistakes. It's far better to design a
| system in which mistakes are categorically impossible.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I'm trying to push back on the knee jerk sentiment that
| there are no bad employees, only bad systems.
|
| There are no systems that are human proof, and what kind
| of human behavior is tolerated is a characteristic of the
| system.
|
| In fact, there are humans that lie, cheat, are apathetic,
| and incompetent. Part of a good system is to not only
| mitigate, but actively weed these people out.
|
| For example, if someone falsifies the inspection
| checklist for your plane, you dont just give them a PIP.
| mike_ivanov wrote:
| Falsifying the inspection checklist is not a honest
| mistake.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > I'm trying to push back on the knee jerk sentiment that
| there are no bad employees, only bad systems.
|
| Why is it important to you?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Because Im an engineer in a quality controlled field
| (Medicine), and my personal experience is that firms
| place too much faith in quality systems and not enough
| emphasis on quality employees.
|
| I see lots of engineers and QA following a elaborate
| procedures with hundreds of checks, but not bothering to
| even read what they sign off on, so they can go golf all
| day.
|
| People seem to think that you can engineer some process
| flow to prevent every error, but every process is garbage
| if the humans dont care or know what they are doing.
|
| Every process is garbage is you dont hire workers with
| the right skills demanded by that process. In an effort
| to drive down costs, lots of companies try to make up for
| talent with process, with poor results, for both the
| companies and patients. you cant replace a brain surgeon
| with 2 plumbers and twice the instructions.
| hughesjj wrote:
| Well certainly not after the first time at least
|
| Imo it's a function of time, company and team culture,
| severity, and role guidelines.
|
| If an employee makes a mistake but followed process, and
| no process change occured, that's just acknowledging the
| cost of doing business imo and would be a unbounded
| number of times so long as it's good faith from the
| employee
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| My point is that good faith and sufficient competence are
| crucial. If the employee didn't care if the plane
| crashed, they are a bad fit.
|
| If they cant read the refueling checklist, they are a bad
| fit.
|
| Ideally you have system controls to screen and weed these
| people out too.
| roenxi wrote:
| > a function of ... severity
|
| Not severity; that sort of thinking is actually part of
| low-safety cultures. A highly safe culture requires the
| insight that people don't behave differently based on
| outcome. In fact, most people can't assess the severity
| of their work (this is by design; for example someone
| with access to the full picture makes the decisions so
| that technicians don't have to). So they couldn't behave
| differently even if they did somehow make better
| decisions when it matters.
|
| But, and I'll reiterate the point for emphasis, people
| make all their decisions using the same brain. It is like
| bugs; any code can be buggy. Code doesn't get less buggy
| because it is important code. It gets less buggy because
| it is tested, formally verified, battle scarred, well
| specified and doesn't change often.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| That's not really the question:
|
| Punishment culture assumes people naturally do bad, lazy
| things unless they are deterred by punishment and fear.
| Therefore we must punish mistakes.
|
| That perspective has long been debunked. You don't see
| competent, skilled leaders using it. It turns out that
| generally people want to do well (just like you do), and
| they don't when they are scared / activated (in
| fight/flight/freeze mode), poorly trained, poorly
| supported, or poorly led. They excel when they feel safe
| and supported.
|
| If you are the manager and the technician makes the same
| mistake the 2nd or 3rd time, you will find the problem
| the next morning in your bathroom mirror. :) At best, you
| have put them in a position to fail without the proper
| training or support. Leadership might also be an issue.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I would say that every skilled leader must use
| punishments and consequences to some degree.
|
| If your tech gets drunk every day and doesnt do their
| job, you need to cut them loose. This isn't a management
| problem.
|
| Sometimes people end up in positions where they are not
| suited and will continue to fail. If you hired a plumber
| and you need a doctor, that isnt an on the job training,
| support, or leadership issue.
| reverius42 wrote:
| > you need to cut them loose. This isn't a management
| problem.
|
| That is 100% a management problem.
|
| > Sometimes people end up in positions
|
| I wonder how they got in those positions? That sounds
| like a management problem too.
| buildsjets wrote:
| That was the late, and definitely great, R.A. "Bob"
| Hoover, I am proud to have shared a beer with him at
| Oshkosh. His Shrike Commander was miss-fueled with jet
| fuel instead of avgas because it was mistaken for the the
| larger turboprop model. Rather than blaming the
| individual refueler, he recognized that there was a
| systemic problem and developed an engineering solution.
| He proposed and the industry adopted a mutually
| incompatible standard of fuel nozzles/receptacles for jet
| fuel and avgas as a result. You can find some great
| YouTube material on him, or the film "Flying the
| Feathered Edge"
|
| https://sierrahotel.net/blogs/news/a-life-lesson
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Hoover#Hoover_nozzle_an
| d_H...
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2334694/
| buildsjets wrote:
| Here's an old timey video of Bob in his prime. At 8:55 he
| flys a barrel roll with one hand while pouring himself a
| glass of iced tea with the other. Hardest part was
| pouring the tea backhanded so the camera had a good view.
| Then he finishes with his trademark no-engine loop, roll,
| and landing.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT1kVmqmvHU&t=510s
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> When in reality the problem is that you had a system
| that allowed a typo to go all the way into production._
|
| That's a typical root cause, and is exactly what should
| come out of good post-mortems.
|
| But human nature is human nature...
| zettabomb wrote:
| Every sane organization implements this. Failure to do so
| leads to fear of reporting mistakes, and you get Boeing. This
| isn't news.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| I think the wording is clumsy, but this is analogous no-blame
| processes. The wording is just accounting for the possibility
| of wontonly malicious or recklessly negligent work quality.
| Think someone either sabotaging the product, or showing up to
| work very high or drunk.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| This.
|
| A mistake like "accidentally turning the machine off when
| it shouldn't be" is a fixable problem.
|
| If someone has attitude like "fuck the checklist, I know
| better", it is not really a mistake, and that person should
| be rightfully fired or at least moved to a position where
| they cannot do any harm.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Who do you think came up with this rule, bleeding heart
| liberals'? Stop and think for a second, why does that rule
| exist?
|
| You described a fantasy world, in the real world everyone
| makes mistakes, and if the mistakes are punished, then there
| are no mistakes because no one reports them. That is until
| the mistake is so catastrophic, it cannot be covered up-
| that's how you get Chernobyl or Boeing max
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| I once destroyed $10k worth of aerospace equipment. I
| admitted it immediately and my only reprimand was that my
| boss asked me if I learned my lesson. (I did)
| Log_out_ wrote:
| Once destroyed a industrial manufacturing site with a
| unfinished robot program that ran because I allowed myself
| to be distracted mid alterations.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| And what happened?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Ideally, as a result of the post-mortem, the same mistake
| shouldn't even be _repeatable_ , because mechanisms should be
| introduced to prevent it.
|
| And if someone keeps making new original mistakes, revealing
| vulnerabilities in your processes, I would say that it is a
| very valuable employee, a lucky pen-tester of sorts.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| Wowwww never become a manager please.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I thought this was critical:
|
| >> _It also noted that employees do not understand how to use
| the different reporting systems and which reporting system to
| use and when._
|
| As was noted by the purported insider, re: multiple overlapping
| systems of record/not-record, Boeing's actual _processes_
| themselves are badly in need of overhaul.
|
| This feel like a clear example of where top-down + bottom-up
| independent read-back verification would have been useful.
|
| I.e. management decides they're going to create Safety Process
| X using Systems A, B, and C. They do so, then circulate
| training (top-down). _THEN_ you conduct independent interviews
| with employees at the bottom, to measure whether the new
| processes are understood at that level (bottom-up). If results
| aren 't satisfactory, then add additional training or
| reengineer the processes.
|
| Too often, it seems like this shit gets done at the VP
| PowerPoint level, and ground reality diverges without anyone
| noticing.
|
| The map is not the world: interviews with a representative
| random sampling aren't hard.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| I'd say Learning Culture is also a problem.
|
| Boeing has made numerous missteps in the last 15 years after
| being the world leader in airliners for around half a century.
| This only happens when knowledge about how to make a safe
| product is purposefully discarded and attempts to bring that
| knowledge back are intentionally ignored. In Boeing's case,
| it's due to desires for increased profits. They are unwilling
| to learn these lessons because it costs money that _may_ be
| there at quarter's end.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| I'd note that financial markets driven reorganizations are
| antithetical to elements 1-4 and this explains how Boeing
| managed to have a culture of safety but lose it (it's often put
| as MD management took but an article a bit back showed that
| this was part of the Boeing CEO seeing the financial writing on
| the wall). Uh, and that happened "under the watchful eyes" of
| the FAA.
|
| The opposite of 1-4 could be described as the "culture of lies,
| ignorance and fear". Fear is a good strategy for getting people
| working hard (if not always well) and lies make fear universal.
| Compartmentalizing information is needed to allow more and more
| functions to be subcontracted. If the company is extracting
| maximum value from it's assets this year, it has no incentive
| to report problems that will only appear in the future - by the
| time the future rolls around, the share holders have their and
| the shell of the remaining company can be tossed away. etc.
|
| Also, another HN commentator mentioned how eliminating a
| culture of lies and retaliation is once it's in place. There's
| never a guarantee that those revealing a problem won't be
| punished once regulators turn their backs.
|
| And 5 is only useful once 1-4 are in place. Otherwise, it's a
| culture of flexibly hiding your shit in different places.
|
| Edit: This article was on HN a while back.
| https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merg...
| Key quote: _These decisions, made by Boeing CEO Phil Condit,
| were made with a close eye on the company's bottom line ahead
| of a hotly anticipated commercial-jet boom. An ambitious
| program of cost-cutting, outsourcing, and digitalization had
| already begun._
| mvkel wrote:
| A great example of what will happen when the libertarian mindset
| takes hold of any industry.
|
| The risk/reward among market forces is entirely different; many
| lives lost become "the cost of doing business" despite being
| entirely preventable.
| burnerburnson wrote:
| The average engineer at Boeing makes $120k/year. That's about
| $50k less than what a new grad with no experience will get from
| big tech.
|
| Boeing doesn't have a culture problem, they have an idiot
| problem. The idea that you can hire competent engineers offering
| salaries like that is absurd.
|
| They need to adopt a pay for performance mentality and bring in
| managers who are not afraid to fire underperformers.
| kghe3X wrote:
| Just where is an inexperienced new grad making $170k out of the
| gate? I find this difficult to believe. Are you normalizing for
| cost of living? I suspect, most Boeing employees aren't based
| in the Valley.
| StevenXC wrote:
| A major Boeing campus is in Huntsville, AL, which is going to
| affect that average for sure.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| Safety culture is too hard for the MBA's to put a dollar value
| on, until it's too late.
|
| Having worked in the (network) Security domain for some time, the
| same thing there. When things are going well, "what do we pay you
| for?", and when they turn catastrophic, "what do we pay you for?"
| iancmceachern wrote:
| They sold their soul to make the people at the top rich.
|
| It's not about airplanes, it's about human nature.
| dogman144 wrote:
| I knew a Boeing swe, and several years back the QA approach with
| code sounded hugely disconcerting considering big picture
| controlled an airplane - variables named "A, B, C," variable
| reuse, shell staffing/multi-hats on their desk due to retention
| issues, on and on.
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| Something that helps a lot: have a safety incident team with
| absolutely no connection to HR. They have no ability to fire
| anyone or report on your performance review, they don't talk to
| managers about people and just record and compile safety related
| issues. Yeah, you may have an employee or two who screams wolf a
| lot, but their job is just to investigate, fix the specific
| issue, anonymize, and aggregate the reports. This lack of
| connection should be very public so everyone feels comfortable
| talking to them.
|
| This is part of how the FAA vastly reduced the fatality rate in
| GA. They stopped playing cop and started playing engineer.
| kmonad wrote:
| I like the idea, but I am pessimistic. The more experienced I
| get (aka getting older), the more I see administrative bloating
| as the cancer of institutions---a somewhat equally inescapable
| fate. Installing a safety reporting administration may do what
| it set out to do, initially. But at some point, promotions may
| be handed out to those with most reports, perhaps perverting
| the initial intent.
|
| In another thread I read that the EASA and FAA used to send
| Airbus/EASA engineers to Boeing (and maybe vice versa) who
| could raise all sorts of hell if mistakes were found. Such a
| setup seems perhaps harder to "game". I do not know this for a
| fact, I recall it from reading another debate, so take it as
| hearsay.
| andruby wrote:
| The stock market doesn't seem to care about this report. Unless
| it was already rumored a while ago and priced in.
|
| BA (Boeing's stock ticker) has been trading sideways this week.
| neilv wrote:
| If company leadership recklessly eroded safety practices, of a
| well-understood safety-critical national institution... is there
| individual criminal liability?
|
| Prosecuting willful bad behavior at the top that led to deaths
| might help push the culture back.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| I don't know the situation in the USA, but it would appear
| there is virtually never indivdiual liability. Here in New
| Zealand there is absolutely personal director and executive
| responsibility and accountability where it comes to safety.
| heisenbit wrote:
| Reading Admiral Cloudberg's latest
| https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-fall-of-the-viscount...
| history on deicing of air inlets and that these systems are now
| automatic and the 737 system was grandfathered in was
| interesting: ,,(The Boeing 737 is of course the one big
| exception, because its 1960s-era crew-activated engine anti-ice
| system has been repeatedly grandfathered in with no automatic
| mode for the last half century.) ,,
|
| Did not Boeing ask for an exemption recently due to a dangerous
| heat up situation if these heaters were not turned off in time?
| aydyn wrote:
| I know this is beating a dead horse at this point, but the "key
| element" missing is not safety culture, it's accountability:
| people need to start facing real jail time for all the deaths
| they've caused.
|
| None of this distributed blame horseshit.
|
| Downstream will fall in place once the correct incentives are in
| place.
| schainks wrote:
| The leaders of Boeing are clearly fumbling the ball, paying
| themselves more than ever, shitting on their labor and supply
| chain sub-contractors, all while costing ME as a taxpayer and
| occasional user more money and stress than ever.
|
| Such a small group of leaders extracting maximum value for
| themselves at both the cost of the company, greater economy, AND
| the US Taxpayer sounds, I don't know... criminal?
| letsdothisagain wrote:
| It's not new either. Teddy Roosevelt ran on trust busting and
| defeated both the dems and republicans.
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