4 ms·

Does anyone with experience in the automotive industry have any thoughts on this? What sort of culture would lead to the selection of an inappropriate part in t

by leoedin 12y ago

Does anyone with experience in the automotive industry have any thoughts on this? What sort of culture would lead to the selection of an inappropriate part in the first place? Would it be cost driven? Does this idea that an individual engineer's component selection decision would play such a big part ring true with other commentators experiences?

walshemj 12y ago
Well when I did my mech eng college course one lecturer mentioned that a UK car manufacturer used the wrong type of component to fix the steering wheel to the shaft. Resulting in it being possible for the steering wheel to detach! whilst driving.
serf 12y ago
It's likely just an error in the design process that turns into a problem that is cost driven, but from the perspective that the problem was found after tooling had been acquired and production started and would require a lengthy/costly recall procedure.
fleitz 12y ago
Not an automotive engineer, however, it's the same culture that produces the plethora of bugs in software. It's a human factors issue. It's no different than an engineer selection of a single line of code, if it's in the wrong place, crashy crashy. Here's a much better article: http://www.seattlepi.com/news/us/article/Engineer-s-switch-from-hell-began-GM-recall-woes-5533018.php http://www.seattlepi.com/news/us/article/Engineer-s-switch-f... Perhaps the engineer was distracted by an underground boxing ring.
- leoedin 12y ago
  For reference, I work in the space industry, where piles of paperwork are produced to justify any component selection decision. I can't imagine a situation where anything, even down to individual capacitors, would be selected without at least 2 people having some input to that selection. Our qualification processes are absolutely massive and take decades though - not particularly suitable for the automotive industry. I don't think that this can be compared directly to the kind of adhoc software development that is routine in many places. Engineering processes have developed over decades to eliminate human error and very, very rarely allow single unjustified decisions made by a single person to propegate through to a finished product. I'm surprised that in a world where individual car platforms cost billions of dollars to develop there was never a point at which the switch selection was challenged. I haven't read the full report though - perhaps it's not quite as the news article suggests. It would be interesting to hear the point of view of someone in the automotive industry (if any of them are HN readers?)
  - fleitz 12y ago
    Heh, I seem to remember something about O ring selection in the space industry, and how a senior engineer dismissed the claims of more jr engineers.
valarauca1 12y ago
I've actually lived with a DRE for several months, and he's a drinking buddy of mine (works at GM too). The first thing you need to understand is the pressure DRE's are under. It sounds odd, but General Motors is a large and complex entity. Their release system is old and buggy, not to mention never completely overhauled, just constantly having more checks ticked on when ever a recall happens. This is actually true at Ford too, the Big 3 hold on to technology a lot longer then other companies. Ford's time clock system is still ran on emulated System360's using MTS a circa 1967 OS. Lastly DRE's are more of a projects internal sales arm (they sell the product to management. A DRE's job is to also get the test results from the test engineer, get it to the management, take the managements complaints to the designers/hardware engineers, and relay the tests plans back to the test engineers. Basically high technical middle management. Their responsibilities at some companies may involve actually writing test plans, sometimes not. I don't believe GM does directly but somebody under the DRE does this. Ultimately the DRE is just the guy who gets all the forms to all the right people so he can push the plans into the system. And takes all the responsibility when a product fails. On top of that your normally managing 5-6 products concurrently, each taking 18-72 months to clear the system. Your work load is basically endless meetings 500+ email a day, and 100+ phone calls.
- swimfar 12y ago
  DRE=Design Responsible Engineer
  - valarauca1 12y ago
    Design/Release Engineer. Its just a middle management fall man who knows CAD.
  - jcampbell1 12y ago
    DRE = Design and Release Engineer.
- TheSpiceIsLife 12y ago
  It sounds like the automotive manufacturing industry is ripe for disruption. Enter the likes of Telsa Motors. Being able to focus on two or three products, getting them right, being 'agile'. Of course, for the agile new company to survive there has to be old cumbersome companies for it to carve a market from. I have a hunch there will be others, probably 'cheap Chinese knock-offs'[1] that will outperform the incumbents on price and quality. Hopefully the whole industry benefits. 1. I use the term 'Chinese' in this phrase to represent any state actor who can rapidly deploy, or incentivise, manufacturing capability at a significant discount to their Western counterparts.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Yunk 12y ago
I have a friend who worked for TI's automotive. They sold it off as the entire sector is bellow TI's minimum profitability level. So cost is issue #1.. But the subtext in the article makes it pretty clear. They are tracking cost of design as accurately as unit costs. It is largely an "in for a dime in for a dollar" scenario for each internal engineer when they approve a design direction that appears to cut a cost. The larger oversight is unaware of some of the hidden issues and each engineer is motivated to paper over them to some extent to protect their relative standing. The engineers who are completely transparent are completely unemployed.
Shivetya 12y ago
Well when you have too many conflicting responsibilities tied up in one person your bound to see something slip through. Its not a culture problem, its a management problem. One person cannot be allowed to essentially design, development, qa, and support. If they are who knows what essential steps are not fully performed if at all? checks and balances fall by the wayside when your both. One note I remember from some buddies who used to be in similar careers, part costs are calculated not by individual unit prices but the production run. Hence a change you say, that is only a few cents can be hundreds of thousands of dollars.

by leoedin 12y ago

walshemj 12y ago

Well when I did my mech eng college course one lecturer mentioned that a UK car manufacturer used the wrong type of component to fix the steering wheel to the shaft. Resulting in it being possible for the steering wheel to detach! whilst driving.

serf 12y ago

It's likely just an error in the design process that turns into a problem that is cost driven, but from the perspective that the problem was found after tooling had been acquired and production started and would require a lengthy/costly recall procedure.

fleitz 12y ago

Not an automotive engineer, however, it's the same culture that produces the plethora of bugs in software. It's a human factors issue. It's no different than an engineer selection of a single line of code, if it's in the wrong place, crashy crashy. Here's a much better article: http://www.seattlepi.com/news/us/article/Engineer-s-switch-from-hell-began-GM-recall-woes-5533018.php http://www.seattlepi.com/news/us/article/Engineer-s-switch-f... Perhaps the engineer was distracted by an underground boxing ring.

leoedin 12y ago
For reference, I work in the space industry, where piles of paperwork are produced to justify any component selection decision. I can't imagine a situation where anything, even down to individual capacitors, would be selected without at least 2 people having some input to that selection. Our qualification processes are absolutely massive and take decades though - not particularly suitable for the automotive industry. I don't think that this can be compared directly to the kind of adhoc software development that is routine in many places. Engineering processes have developed over decades to eliminate human error and very, very rarely allow single unjustified decisions made by a single person to propegate through to a finished product. I'm surprised that in a world where individual car platforms cost billions of dollars to develop there was never a point at which the switch selection was challenged. I haven't read the full report though - perhaps it's not quite as the news article suggests. It would be interesting to hear the point of view of someone in the automotive industry (if any of them are HN readers?)
- fleitz 12y ago
  Heh, I seem to remember something about O ring selection in the space industry, and how a senior engineer dismissed the claims of more jr engineers.

valarauca1 12y ago

I've actually lived with a DRE for several months, and he's a drinking buddy of mine (works at GM too). The first thing you need to understand is the pressure DRE's are under. It sounds odd, but General Motors is a large and complex entity. Their release system is old and buggy, not to mention never completely overhauled, just constantly having more checks ticked on when ever a recall happens. This is actually true at Ford too, the Big 3 hold on to technology a lot longer then other companies. Ford's time clock system is still ran on emulated System360's using MTS a circa 1967 OS. Lastly DRE's are more of a projects internal sales arm (they sell the product to management. A DRE's job is to also get the test results from the test engineer, get it to the management, take the managements complaints to the designers/hardware engineers, and relay the tests plans back to the test engineers. Basically high technical middle management. Their responsibilities at some companies may involve actually writing test plans, sometimes not. I don't believe GM does directly but somebody under the DRE does this. Ultimately the DRE is just the guy who gets all the forms to all the right people so he can push the plans into the system. And takes all the responsibility when a product fails. On top of that your normally managing 5-6 products concurrently, each taking 18-72 months to clear the system. Your work load is basically endless meetings 500+ email a day, and 100+ phone calls.

swimfar 12y ago
DRE=Design Responsible Engineer
- valarauca1 12y ago
  Design/Release Engineer. Its just a middle management fall man who knows CAD.
- jcampbell1 12y ago
  DRE = Design and Release Engineer.
TheSpiceIsLife 12y ago
It sounds like the automotive manufacturing industry is ripe for disruption. Enter the likes of Telsa Motors. Being able to focus on two or three products, getting them right, being 'agile'. Of course, for the agile new company to survive there has to be old cumbersome companies for it to carve a market from. I have a hunch there will be others, probably 'cheap Chinese knock-offs'[1] that will outperform the incumbents on price and quality. Hopefully the whole industry benefits. 1. I use the term 'Chinese' in this phrase to represent any state actor who can rapidly deploy, or incentivise, manufacturing capability at a significant discount to their Western counterparts.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

Yunk 12y ago

I have a friend who worked for TI's automotive. They sold it off as the entire sector is bellow TI's minimum profitability level. So cost is issue #1.. But the subtext in the article makes it pretty clear. They are tracking cost of design as accurately as unit costs. It is largely an "in for a dime in for a dollar" scenario for each internal engineer when they approve a design direction that appears to cut a cost. The larger oversight is unaware of some of the hidden issues and each engineer is motivated to paper over them to some extent to protect their relative standing. The engineers who are completely transparent are completely unemployed.

Shivetya 12y ago

Well when you have too many conflicting responsibilities tied up in one person your bound to see something slip through. Its not a culture problem, its a management problem. One person cannot be allowed to essentially design, development, qa, and support. If they are who knows what essential steps are not fully performed if at all? checks and balances fall by the wayside when your both. One note I remember from some buddies who used to be in similar careers, part costs are calculated not by individual unit prices but the production run. Hence a change you say, that is only a few cents can be hundreds of thousands of dollars.