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What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

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Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#351

Post by shiroiushi »

FredPret wrote: post #301
dgoldstein0 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well there's the FAA oversight... Which has also hollowed out. NTSB is still an amazing accident investigator but better to prevent these things than wait for NTSB to step in

Maybe the FAA should hire three engineering firms to go over the designs and manufacturing and have them compete to see who can find the worst flaws. Just having one big entity (FAA) check up on one other big entity (Boeing) leads to problems.

The FAA doesn't even do that, they just let Boeing check up on themselves.

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#352

Post by data_maan »

hliyan wrote: post #348
masklinn wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It just took 25 years to finally happen. "Quality inertia" is one thing which allows for giant amounts of damage to be done long before the wheels visibly come off, as deviance gets normalised (and even mandated in cases such as Boeing) and the company eats its reserve of quality and goodwill, it starts going off-track in small ways before it falls off a cliff. It took closer to 20 years than 25 for the wheels to c…

I call this "quality momentum". A leader can come in, look at whatever "engine" that drives quality, decide it's not essential, remove it entirely, and coast on the momentum of previous quality practices for years before entropy sets in. But by this time, the board and shareholders have already rewarded the leader for "eliminating waste".

Funny isn't it?

I work in AI, where it's always about the learning signal, and how much that is delayed.

Humans (boards) really also suck at learning if the signal (crashes) is delayed (due to quality momentum)

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#353

Post by JackFr »

Eisenstein wrote: post #243
JackFr wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s nonsense. Markets are the best way we’ve come up with to allocate capital. Committees and commissars do not do a better job.

> Markets are the best way we’ve come up with to allocate capital. Properly regulated, competitive markets. Aerospace regulation is based on a lot of trust, which Boeing seems to have exploited, causing this problem. The market is not competitive; there are only two players and the output of only one of them cannot meet demand. > Committees and commissars do not do a better job. Dichotomies are good for making punctu…

I could have been clearer, but I honestly meant my point to be limited to the stock market as a means for allocating capital.

I do favor markets in general and I understand their limitations.

And with respect to allocating capital, stock markets have proven to be better than the varying degrees of state economies.

> You are smarter than that.

True. :-)

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#354

Post by baggy_trough »

diputsmonro wrote: post #339
pdonis wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not asking why Boeing continued to make money. I'm asking why the system as a whole didn't spot much sooner that their engineering had been trashed, and some kind of intervention wasn't made before two fatal airline accidents and other near misses happened. The point of the oversight we have is supposed to be to spot problems before they reach that level. If your answer is that not just Boeing, but our whole syst…

There is no comforting answer. Welcome to unchecked capitalism, it's short-term-profit-driven thinking all the way down. In every industry it's the same. The guard rails have been systematically dismantled for decades by opportunists just like this, hoping to make some quick cash and jump ship before it falls down. Whenever anyone points this out, they get labeled as cynics who hate capitalism and industry, and their…

Commercial aerospace and military contracting is your example of "unchecked capitalism"? Boeing is practically a federal agency!

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#355

Post by [deleted] »

JohnFen wrote: post #74
darth_avocado wrote: post #12

> He mocked him in weekly meetings whenever he dared contribute a thought, assigned a fellow manager to spy on him and spread rumors that he did not play nicely with others, and disciplined him for things like “using email to communicate” and pushing for flaws he found on planes to be fixed. Sounds like a regular middle manager in any tech company. Sad unfortunate effect of the power asymmetries in corporate structur…

> Sounds like a regular middle manager in any tech company. I bet this is true in some, but certainly not all, tech companies. I've only encountered one example of such a manager in my entire career (and quit just to get away from that nonsense).

[deleted]

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#356

Post by shiroiushi »

masklinn wrote: post #205
MilStdJunkie wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember the big rollout of the Dreamliner in 2014 to show it was all done, but it was actually an empty metal tube with landing gear duct taped on it? And remember the venom that people got for bringing up the fact that, you know, you could see the sky from the wheel wells? Or the second rollout, when they had to strap the fuse segments together because no one knew where the fasteners were? Oh we could go on and on,…

> Remember the big rollout of the Dreamliner in 2014 to show it was all done, but it was actually an empty metal tube with landing gear duct taped on it? It was in 2007 (on July 8th, a date obviously picked for the memes). Maiden flight was supposed to be two months or so away with introduction in 2008. Maiden flight was on December 15, 2009. Commercial service started October 2011. > name a commercially successful B…

It seems like Airbus should be a good investment opportunity: if investors poured billions of dollars into the company to help it rapidly expand production capacity, they'd have no trouble selling every plane they can make.

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#357

Post by benreesman »

I know that this is about Boeing, but it is just such a perfect epitaph for the end of the current decaying Valley elite. What took Boeing 20 years FAANG did in one:

“CEO Jim McNerney, who joined Boeing in 2005, had last helmed 3M, where management as he saw it had ‘overvalued experience and undervalued leadership’ before he purged the veterans into early retirement.”

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#358

Post by borlanco »

freeopinion wrote: post #334
peblos wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selling 6 planes is nothing. It wouldn’t even cover the standby aircraft of many fleets. You need large orders to make it feasible, and you need a strong product to secure those orders. FedEx, UPS and co. aren’t going to fund you long term unless you have a product and you need good teams and good funding to even get you to that starting block. Boom is probably the closest thing to what is suggested but many still do…

Obviously, selling 6 planes is not the end goal. But you have to sell 6 before you sell 600. Pre-selling an aircraft or two to a few shipping companies would pose a low risk investment to those companies, but provide a great lift for a struggling new hopeful. Look at how that worked for Rivian. Your example of engines is an excellent point. Repeat that story 100 times to begin to understand the enormous difficulty. W…

This Asianometry video [0] explains why it is so difficult to develop and market new planes.

tl;dr The main obstacles are supply chain inefficiencies and that no one buys planes that aren't cost-effective.

[0] Japan's Commercial Jet Failure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkmtrsE9Jfg

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#359

Post by shiroiushi »

YeBanKo wrote: post #189
masklinn wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt xitter has as much quality buffer as Boeing had in '97, and Elon's brutalisation of it was a lot less gradual.

Does quality matter as much for X as it does for Boeing? A closer example to Boeing is Tesla and SpaceX. Tesla is a mixed bag of good and bad stuff. But SpaceX is a marvel and essentially has no competitors. Compare X to media. Since the bridge collapse in the Baltimore I have read interesting analysis on X and reddit, not the best medium, but yet did not come across a single decent article about it in the media.

>Does quality matter as much for X as it does for Boeing?

If Xitter returns 404s for 5 minutes, it's not the end of the world. Its users will come back after going to the bathroom. If Xitter spews garbage "news" stories, it doesn't really matter: its users will stick around anyway, and the people who think the stuff on Xitter is garbage are already gone anyway, or not paying attention to those channels anyway.

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#360

Post by data_maan »

constantcrying wrote: post #226
MilStdJunkie wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember the big rollout of the Dreamliner in 2014 to show it was all done, but it was actually an empty metal tube with landing gear duct taped on it? And remember the venom that people got for bringing up the fact that, you know, you could see the sky from the wheel wells? Or the second rollout, when they had to strap the fuse segments together because no one knew where the fasteners were? Oh we could go on and on,…

>name a commercially successful Boeing-designed product from the 21st century. Something that can legitimately be called "Successful", and "Boeing" Boeing is still able to sell planes to customers, they still have a lot of orders in their backlog. This would only change if their are mass cancellations by their customers. There is a massive demand for planes right now, airlines rather would own a "good enough" plane f…

I think you need to think of the air company clients: us. If we suddenly would decide "nope, not going to board a Boeing anymore" companies would stop ordering, and then Boeing would experience severe economic punishment for it's actions.
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