22 ms·

Two of those are manufacturing mistakes, and it seems likely the door one is as well. Not that that helps the passengers, but they're not systemic design flaws.

Two of those are manufacturing mistakes, and it seems likely the door one is as well. Not that that helps the passengers, but they're not systemic design flaws. That anti-icing system is deranged, though. They effectively installed a timed detonator on the engines and want a safety exemption for it.

mastax 3y ago
A manufacturing mistake which makes it into service is a failure of QA and testing systems design. (At least above a certain threshold which varies depending on the industry etc. etc.)
- derefr 3y ago
  Depends. You can’t do e.g. crystallographical analysis of metals inside an engine if the engine is already put together. You have to trust your vendor that they built the engine correctly and checked the materials themselves. Or at most send auditors to the vendor.
  - krisoft 3y ago
    > You can’t do e.g. crystallographical analysis of metals inside an engine if the engine is already put together. QA is not forced to only deal with assembled components. They can be embeded before the assembly process to QA the parts. For example they could peform crystallographical analysis on a subset of blades which are ready for assembly. They can also take apart a certain percentage of randomly selected engines, perform crystallographical analysis on a subset of parts and then re-assemble the engines. Many options.
    - plorg 3y ago
      Titanium fan disks, for example are all required to be inspected not just when installed but also at regular engine maintenance intervals. The inspection requires essentially complete disassembly of the fan (so it is required during particular engine maintenance events) followed by the application of penetrating dye and inspection at a narrow granularity. This kind of maintenance and inspection actually can be required and performed, it just costs more time and money. If we want to be all market capitalism about this we could require tests necessary to ensure safety and let engineers, business people, and executives make decisions that price in the cost of dangerous and risky designs that require constant and invasive inspection and maintenance. The only real difference with today would be regulators having a spine and/or more than pro forma power to enforce their decisions.
belter 3y ago
A manufacturing mistake is, in all likelihood, another type of systemic fault. Why would you think only one aircraft would suffer from it?
- piva00 3y ago
  Back in 2014[1] Al Jazeera (the international edition) had a pretty good in-depth report of issues with the manufacturing line for the 787. There are known issues regarding quality assurance at Boeing for a decade now, they keep going down the drain. The MBAs from McDonnell-Douglas won, and properly tarnished Boeing's image... [1] https://www.aljazeera.com/program/investigations/2014/7/20/the-boeing-787-broken-dreams https://www.aljazeera.com/program/investigations/2014/7/20/t...
olig15 3y ago
Ah you’re right. They’re not design flaws, just manufacturing issues, so sign me up for the first flight when the max flies again… People falling out the sky because the wing falls off because someone forgot to bolt it on aren’t going to care if it’s a design issue or a manufacturing issue. Boeing is doing both, so the blame lies with them either way.
- Miraste 3y ago
  I absolutely agree. I meant it as a comparison to issues like the infamous MCAS, which was wrong on purpose on all 737 Max 8s everywhere. There isn't a change in outcome between the flaws, but I think the difference between a mistake and a known issue that was left in while the company tried to change regulations to allow it, all for a tiny cut to the BOM, is worth noting.
  - eqvinox 3y ago
    Question is, why were these things manufactured wrong. It's well possible that Boeing's engineering documents are poor or misleading, triggering human error during manufacturing. This is of course pure speculation and it might equally well be some single manufacturer pressuring ("optimizing") their employees (or even machines) past the point of reliability. Either way I'm not gonna fault anyone for refusing to fly on a 737 MAX. At some point you gotta make a call and shift your assumption from "isolated engineering/manufacturing mishap" to "corporate screwed the entire product top to bottom".
- samtho 3y ago
  The statement pointing out that it’s a manufacturing error (I’m guessing) was not intended to be solution to the problem. It pointed out that those problems have less to do the certification of the design and more to do with a manufacturing defect. If the manufacturer created parts that were up to specifications, these things would have not been a problem. This is a very important distinction because a design flaw is a much bigger deal for this aircraft type than that poorly manufactured components. Boing is still at fault, yes, but we should exercise restraint in becoming too reductionistic on complicated engineering problems.
hnarn 3y ago
Separating “manufacturing mistakes” only makes sense if someone else is responsible for manufacturing. As far as I know, Boeing is responsible for both the design and the manufacturing of these aircraft so the difference is purely informational, but in terms of criticizing Boeing mostly irrelevant.
- Brybry 3y ago
  Spirit AeroSystems makes the fuselage for the 737 Max. [1][2] It's even in the article: "Spirit AeroSystems, which makes the fuselages for the planes, referred CNBC to Boeing when asked about the incident" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_AeroSystems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_AeroSystems [2] https://www.spiritaero.com/ https://www.spiritaero.com/
  - bombcar 3y ago
    At some point it has to be simple liability for the final seller, ignoring all subcontractors. Otherwise there’s too many shellgames you can play.
  - piva00 3y ago
    Boeing decided to outsource to Spirit, Boeing is responsible to attest the quality of what Spirit is delivering for a Boeing product. If Samsung/Apple would outsource their batteries to Megabattery Company LLC and those batteries started to randomly explode we would all be blaming Samsung/Apple for not doing proper QC. I hope we all hold Boeing to a much higher level of scrutiny than cellphone manufacturers.
  - peterhunt 3y ago
    For all intents and purposes, Spirit is part of Boeing. Spirit was Boeing Wichita until 2005, and today Boeing represents 85% of sales.
natch 3y ago
The troubling thing to me here over and above these issues is if they (Boeing) think some of these things are ok to the point that they ask for an exemption, what else is there that would fail rigorous safety checks but has been deemed ok by management, and has not come to light yet? We may never know until it’s too late.
maronato 3y ago
This looks like manufacture cost cutting - an issue no amount of good design/engineering can fix. Boeing is no longer engineering focused. It’s a numbers business pumping out planes as fast and as cheap as they can get away with.
marcosdumay 3y ago
> but they're not systemic design flaws. Hum, yes, instead Boeing seems to have systemic manufacturing flaws. Do we have a reason to believe those are contained into the Max line?
- neuralRiot 3y ago
  Isn’t the manufacturing process and quality assurance part of the design in “products” like these? It is in car manufacturing so i assume it should, I don’t believe is sort of an “artisan” production line.
  - marcosdumay 3y ago
    The procedures are part of the design certification. And while some vary from one design to another, many of them do not.
hwillis 3y ago
design for manufacturing is a part of engineering
Erratic6576 3y ago
So not only the design quality is flawed but also the manufacturing process is botched up. That’s reassuring, I guess, because two kind of flaws cancel each other out
- Miraste 3y ago
  Sure they do. At this rate the planes will stop working well enough to take off, eliminating accidents forever.

mastax 3y ago

A manufacturing mistake which makes it into service is a failure of QA and testing systems design. (At least above a certain threshold which varies depending on the industry etc. etc.)

derefr 3y ago
Depends. You can’t do e.g. crystallographical analysis of metals inside an engine if the engine is already put together. You have to trust your vendor that they built the engine correctly and checked the materials themselves. Or at most send auditors to the vendor.
- krisoft 3y ago
  > You can’t do e.g. crystallographical analysis of metals inside an engine if the engine is already put together. QA is not forced to only deal with assembled components. They can be embeded before the assembly process to QA the parts. For example they could peform crystallographical analysis on a subset of blades which are ready for assembly. They can also take apart a certain percentage of randomly selected engines, perform crystallographical analysis on a subset of parts and then re-assemble the engines. Many options.
  - plorg 3y ago
    Titanium fan disks, for example are all required to be inspected not just when installed but also at regular engine maintenance intervals. The inspection requires essentially complete disassembly of the fan (so it is required during particular engine maintenance events) followed by the application of penetrating dye and inspection at a narrow granularity. This kind of maintenance and inspection actually can be required and performed, it just costs more time and money. If we want to be all market capitalism about this we could require tests necessary to ensure safety and let engineers, business people, and executives make decisions that price in the cost of dangerous and risky designs that require constant and invasive inspection and maintenance. The only real difference with today would be regulators having a spine and/or more than pro forma power to enforce their decisions.

belter 3y ago

A manufacturing mistake is, in all likelihood, another type of systemic fault. Why would you think only one aircraft would suffer from it?

piva00 3y ago
Back in 2014[1] Al Jazeera (the international edition) had a pretty good in-depth report of issues with the manufacturing line for the 787. There are known issues regarding quality assurance at Boeing for a decade now, they keep going down the drain. The MBAs from McDonnell-Douglas won, and properly tarnished Boeing's image... [1] https://www.aljazeera.com/program/investigations/2014/7/20/the-boeing-787-broken-dreams https://www.aljazeera.com/program/investigations/2014/7/20/t...

olig15 3y ago

Ah you’re right. They’re not design flaws, just manufacturing issues, so sign me up for the first flight when the max flies again… People falling out the sky because the wing falls off because someone forgot to bolt it on aren’t going to care if it’s a design issue or a manufacturing issue. Boeing is doing both, so the blame lies with them either way.

Miraste 3y ago
I absolutely agree. I meant it as a comparison to issues like the infamous MCAS, which was wrong on purpose on all 737 Max 8s everywhere. There isn't a change in outcome between the flaws, but I think the difference between a mistake and a known issue that was left in while the company tried to change regulations to allow it, all for a tiny cut to the BOM, is worth noting.
- eqvinox 3y ago
  Question is, why were these things manufactured wrong. It's well possible that Boeing's engineering documents are poor or misleading, triggering human error during manufacturing. This is of course pure speculation and it might equally well be some single manufacturer pressuring ("optimizing") their employees (or even machines) past the point of reliability. Either way I'm not gonna fault anyone for refusing to fly on a 737 MAX. At some point you gotta make a call and shift your assumption from "isolated engineering/manufacturing mishap" to "corporate screwed the entire product top to bottom".
samtho 3y ago
The statement pointing out that it’s a manufacturing error (I’m guessing) was not intended to be solution to the problem. It pointed out that those problems have less to do the certification of the design and more to do with a manufacturing defect. If the manufacturer created parts that were up to specifications, these things would have not been a problem. This is a very important distinction because a design flaw is a much bigger deal for this aircraft type than that poorly manufactured components. Boing is still at fault, yes, but we should exercise restraint in becoming too reductionistic on complicated engineering problems.

hnarn 3y ago

Separating “manufacturing mistakes” only makes sense if someone else is responsible for manufacturing. As far as I know, Boeing is responsible for both the design and the manufacturing of these aircraft so the difference is purely informational, but in terms of criticizing Boeing mostly irrelevant.

Brybry 3y ago
Spirit AeroSystems makes the fuselage for the 737 Max. [1][2] It's even in the article: "Spirit AeroSystems, which makes the fuselages for the planes, referred CNBC to Boeing when asked about the incident" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_AeroSystems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_AeroSystems [2] https://www.spiritaero.com/ https://www.spiritaero.com/
- bombcar 3y ago
  At some point it has to be simple liability for the final seller, ignoring all subcontractors. Otherwise there’s too many shellgames you can play.
- piva00 3y ago
  Boeing decided to outsource to Spirit, Boeing is responsible to attest the quality of what Spirit is delivering for a Boeing product. If Samsung/Apple would outsource their batteries to Megabattery Company LLC and those batteries started to randomly explode we would all be blaming Samsung/Apple for not doing proper QC. I hope we all hold Boeing to a much higher level of scrutiny than cellphone manufacturers.
- peterhunt 3y ago
  For all intents and purposes, Spirit is part of Boeing. Spirit was Boeing Wichita until 2005, and today Boeing represents 85% of sales.

natch 3y ago

The troubling thing to me here over and above these issues is if they (Boeing) think some of these things are ok to the point that they ask for an exemption, what else is there that would fail rigorous safety checks but has been deemed ok by management, and has not come to light yet? We may never know until it’s too late.

maronato 3y ago

This looks like manufacture cost cutting - an issue no amount of good design/engineering can fix. Boeing is no longer engineering focused. It’s a numbers business pumping out planes as fast and as cheap as they can get away with.

marcosdumay 3y ago

> but they're not systemic design flaws. Hum, yes, instead Boeing seems to have systemic manufacturing flaws. Do we have a reason to believe those are contained into the Max line?

neuralRiot 3y ago
Isn’t the manufacturing process and quality assurance part of the design in “products” like these? It is in car manufacturing so i assume it should, I don’t believe is sort of an “artisan” production line.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  The procedures are part of the design certification. And while some vary from one design to another, many of them do not.

hwillis 3y ago

design for manufacturing is a part of engineering

Erratic6576 3y ago

So not only the design quality is flawed but also the manufacturing process is botched up. That’s reassuring, I guess, because two kind of flaws cancel each other out

Miraste 3y ago
Sure they do. At this rate the planes will stop working well enough to take off, eliminating accidents forever.