Harold Dodge said "You can't inspect quality into a system". The father of quality assurance, Edward Deming, understood this when he taught quality control to companies in post war Japan. The US learned these lessons during WWII and promptly forgot them. Increasing inspections doesn't prevent screw ups, it only catches them. You're still wasting money and time on mistakes, some of which will still go undetected by inspection. Just like you can't unit test quality into a crappy dev team. Quality is a cultural value that's built into the system and Boeings culture seems to be garbage.

That's true for mass manufacturing where statistical quality control is applicable. If you are building 30 737s a month, or 5 777s, 100% inspection, which would be abhorrent at the iPhone factory, can be a rational approach. SQA is applicable to the fasteners, less so the whole airframe.

My Psychology of Business 101 professor told this anecdote in the 80's:

IBM decided to use a Japanese subcontractor to make chips for the first time. Since they didn't know what to expect, they put a clause in the contract stipulating "3 defects per 100,000." When they got the shipment, they also received a package with a letter: "We do not understand American business practices. Enclosed are your 3 defects."

Quality is a cultural value that's built into the system and Boeings culture seems to be garbage.

This is exactly what I thought of, when I head they were moving manufacturing to South Carolina. (I lived there while in grad school.)

So, how do you change culture then? Like a dev team adopting quality?

I laughed when I saw the headline. Inspections could help catch some issues but it sounds like the problems run so much deeper than that.

And then decrease quality inspections as soon as public attention has shifted elsewhere in two weeks?

If the alignment of incentives that brought us to this point have not changed, then we'll be back here again shortly. Lightning always strikes twice, and it keeps striking until you take down the damn lightning rod.

Since the public isn't auditing Boeing, public attention has norhing to do with that.

No but Boeing want the public to read things that will reassure them their safety is Boeing’s first priority, until they’ve forgotten about the recent accident.

> Boeing want the public to read things that will reassure them their safety is Boeing’s first priority

It's unclear who Boeing's audience is. I'd guess it's between regulators and electeds, though there may be investor pressure on their Board. I doubt the airlines have leverage, which means passengers don't either.

Friday, January 12, 2024 - https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-increasing-oversight-boeing...

> WASHINGTON, D.C. — After taking decisive and immediate action to ground approximately 171 Boeing 737-9 MAX planes, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) today announced new and significant actions to immediately increase its oversight of Boeing production and manufacturing. These actions come one day after the FAA formally notified Boeing that the FAA has launched an investigation into the company as a result of last Friday’s incident on a Boeing Model 737-9 MAX in which the aircraft lost a passenger door plug while in flight.

> ...

https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/updates-grounding-boeing-737-ma...

> This incident should have never happened and it cannot happen again. FAA formally notified Boeing that it is conducting an investigation to determine if Boeing failed to ensure completed products conformed to its approved design and were in a condition for safe operation in compliance with FAA regulations. This investigation is a result of an incident on a Boeing Model 737-9 MAX where it lost a “plug” type passenger door and additional discrepancies. Boeing’s manufacturing practices need to comply with the high safety standards they’re legally accountable to meet. The letter is attached.

> The safety of the flying public, not speed, will determine the timeline for returning the Boeing 737-9 Max to service.

Attached letter: https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/EIR2024NM420001_737M...

FAA should nationalize their inspection teams. Bill their salaries back to Boeing as a fee.

Something. that would align incentives correctly should be done. But it's a complex issue: nationalizing inspections will cause an increase in the lobbying budget in an attempt at more regulatory capture, unless management culture changes, too.

I was doing a bit of a back of the envelope calculation the other day. The max cabin differential on the 737 Max is a hair over 8psi. If we assume that plug is about 4ft x 3ft that is nearly 14000lb (about 6300kg) pushing on the plug. Quite extraordinary that it didn't fail on the first flight out of the factory.

I see. Now that they've outsourced everything but their core competency (managing) they are going to get a Snowbot so their outsourced teams can inspect the planes. Cool!

Perhaps give a reason for Flagging

Boeing "We were caught cutting corners, lets add some inspections and call it a day." I know Nuclear is super popular solution for Climate Change.

But remember, Boeing has peoples lives in their hands everyday, and the pressure to cut costs is still enough to overcome any qualms about deaths.

Remember the Boeing 737.

Remember how they tried to bypass regulations?

Remember outsourcing Software Testing to cut costs?

Now the door blow out?

Now a cracked windshield?

Cost Cutting will always win over lives.

So just remember that when advocating the return of Nuclear Power.

Chernobyl? Fukushima? These are NOT Exceptions when it comes to industrial accidents. They just happened to be what happened that wasn't caught or covered up and big enough to be remembered. In any industry with cost pressures lives are secondary.

Instead of a single plane, it will be countries destroyed.

The C-Suite and board members need to end up bankrupt and imprisoned.

We need to send a strong message - if you do this you will end up impoverished and in prison.

It isn’t because they didn’t know how to do proper inspections but because they thought it would be worth it to cut corners.

Since this plane was built last year, I’m assuming they know who was responsible for tightening the bolts and inspections.

A journalist needs to bluntly ask if they’ve been fired. If they haven’t, it’s all lip service.

But what let to a situation where someone isn't tightening bolts? Is that pervasive? Is management setting up timelines that cause steps to be skipped?

Fire the wrench holder and declare it fixed?

Agreed. The processes need to assume that humans are imperfect. Firing someone for being imperfect is pure window dressing and would do nothing to prevent the statistically inevitable next time.

Instead of performative scapegoating, we should be asking how it’s possible that there is no documentation showing critical steps were done correctly.

That's true, I'll feel immense relief to hear "the responsible person has been fired".

Done and dusted, the angels in management hunted down the demon with the spanner that couldn't be bothered to do his job. He's probably just doing donuts in his lambo the cheeky beggar.

Fear based on blame is notoriously bad for any process that improve safety. You fire who did it wrong and people will stop putting the right names in the right boxes when signing off stuff, things will be shoved under the rug for fear of retribution.

That's exactly the wrong way to deal with the issue...

Ahh. I see, the person who didn’t tighten the bolts and person who didn’t inspect them just need more empowering training.

I’ve got a feeling that would not have been the approach when Boeing was at its best. Heads would have rolled.

Is that feeling based on anything besides wanting to be seen as a tough guy?

I work as an on site supervisor for a manufacturing plant. The very first thing I tell my subordinates is that it's OK to make mistakes, and that I have made costly mistakes myself. Just report it so that it can be fixed.

Maybe there needs first to be an investigation on what kind of process failure existed for those things even to happen in the first place?

If both failed at their jobs there's something a bit more smelly than just "individual responsibility" going on in an industry where process is extremely important for safety, don't you agree?

Fired? Fired for murder?

Also time doesn’t matter, they should have named records for the lifespan of the plane. Everything else is just destruction of evidence. We need every culprit of the 500+ deaths, or else Boeing has not improved a bit in quality.

fish rots starting at the head

fire the ceo. fire all the managers in the chain that were warned of issues, and asked employees to hide those by making false documentation.

and bar them, for life, to work in anything that has lives that can be put at risk.

hey boing, how does that DEI signaling taste now ?