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Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

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Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#221

Post by na85 »

closeparen wrote: post #212
na85 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe if you go back and read my comment you'll find I said engineers need to consider the ethical ramifications of their work. I neither prescribed a particular ethical conclusion nor required consultation for my definition. There are lots of people who choose not to work in Defense because of the ethical considerations. There are others whose personal senses of ethics are not offended by the idea of making weap…

The aircraft doesn't do what it's specified to do. That's a technical problem. If the aircraft misbehaved but the people involved were really scrupulous about it, it would still be an engineering failure and their strong ethics would not mitigate that.

>The aircraft doesn't do what it's specified to do. That's a technical problem.

The root cause, the reasons why it doesn't do what it's specified to do stem from an ethical problem.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#222

Post by bumby »

bigiain wrote: post #191
salawat wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does Tesla get a pass in terms of pitching that their system is something that it isn't except in the obligatory fine print? Hell, both Boeing and Tesla can be said to have indulged in the same sin: not accurately communicating the nature and capabilities of their product to the end user Taking the viewpoint that caveat emptor absolves the manufacturer of any complicity in mass producing and delivering for use da…

> not accurately communicating the nature and capabilities of their product to the end user I think it's becoming clear that at least Boeing have also indulged in "actively deceiving the regulator" as well as the end user. (It may be that Tesla have also done that, but at least so far nothing like as egregiously as Boeing's recently revealed internal comms...)

What do you base the "active" part of your assertion on?

I'm curious, because what I've read as a layman led me to believe Boeing legitimately didn't know how dangerous it was and their processes/culture helped undermine facilitating a better understanding. Still not good, but a different world than actively deceiving regulators. It almost seems like their cognitive biases deceived themselves

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#223

Post by bumby »

lovich wrote: post #90
slededit wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm almost certain "expense of human lives" didn't come up as a factor on any of the merger pitch decks. Frankly its a huge leap to see that a merger of two successful and relatively safe aircraft manufacturers would be intentionally at the expense of human lives.

Why would it have to be intentional? They are pursuing profit. Human lives were ended as a result of their actions in the pursuit of profit. Is that not pursuing profit at the expense of human lives?

Not trying to be a Boeing apologist, but if the bar is "zero risk" almost no business plan in industry would be implemented.

They have to acknowledge at some point that lives may be at risk in their business. Whether or not that risk level is a acceptable and that they properly gauge that risk 8s another matter

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#224

Post by bumby »

tw04 wrote: post #108
DuskStar wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I drive to the store to get milk and end up getting in a fatal accident along the way, am I pursuing milk at the expense of human lives?

If you drove to the store in a car you knew had faulty brakes and killed someone: yes you would be pursuing milk at the expense of human lives. And I guarantee you if they could prove you knew your brakes were bad, the punishment would absolutely be worse than if you just had an unpreventable accident.

This assumes Boeing had a priori knowledge that the system would cause a crash.

The fact that the system safety analysis didn't label it 'catastrophic' seems to indicate they didn't know this. This doesn't absolve them of the responsibility that they should have, or that they still didn't follow their design procedures stating redundant senaors

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#225

Post by AnimalMuppet »

rjsw wrote: post #218
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not allowed to? How does that work? Boeing thinks they control what people do on their vacation time?

They are American, they don't get significant vacation time. I was really writing about work travel though.

Ah, I see. Yes, that Boeing can legitimately control.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#226

Post by solatic »

rsj_hn wrote: post #219
solatic wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it was a popular idea (especially among managers) to assume that a company can have a core competency of "management" rather than making products or services. No, that isn't the argument at all. A manager at an ice cream factory doesn't need to understand aircraft manufacturing tolerances. If a manager at an ice cream factory outsources the production of chocolate, and the chocolate that arrives as an input is slig…

I guess I don't understand your point. First, you say "that's not the argument", but then you make the case that Ice Cream production is qualitatively different. Yes, exactly! You don't have the depth of the supply chain or the level of interconnectedness in the ice cream factory as you do when you are building a jet with pieces outsourced that are moving parts that need to work together. A slight flaw in the wing ti…

> Such a talent is not a core competency of any firm

No it's not, which is why agile processes have less risk than waterfall processes. You're not making the argument that Boeing should keep all of their manufacturing in-house, you're explaining why Shenzhen has become the hardware manufacturing capital of the world. Shenzhen isn't controlled by a single company, and the ability to quickly order parts from other manufacturers in the Shenzhen area allows hardware manufacturers to respond with the agility you describe. Who controls the individual manufacturing processes is less important than the speed of the feedback loops.

> the idea that you can actually manage risk in a quantitative way is not something borne out by experience

Well, Wall Street would disagree with you.

> We just exited a massive financial crisis

2008 happened not because the underlying risk models were wrong but because people were sold high-risk instruments on the fraudulent premise that they had almost no risk at all, and the rating agencies which mislabeled the risk hid behind the First Amendment. If the high-risk instruments were honestly represented at sale, they wouldn't have been purchased by people seeking low-risk instruments, and the portfolios of most market players would've been well-diversified as planned and able to withstand those kinds of shocks. That the rating agencies were able to hide behind the First Amendment (risk assessments are not political speech) and that nobody went to jail for the fraudulent risk assessments remains a great injustice, in my opinion.

> we see security breaches on a massive scale

Because law and regulation do not set sufficient financial penalty for insufficient security practice and the market at large has shown not to care enough about security to punish players with poor security practice, so the financial risk of a breach is (in my opinion, unacceptably) too low to cause a change in corporate behavior. Again, not an issue with risk management, just people responding to systems as designed.

> Putting together a bureaucracy to control something doesn't mean that it's controlled.

Sadly I actually agree with you on this, which is why I wrote, and I quote, "competency at shifting numbers around on bean-counting accounting sheets is not the same thing as competency at outsourcing".

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#227

Post by bryanrasmussen »

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #173
didbdidnd wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t care what is the name of your company’s department that lied to me is. Matter of fact, I don’t even care how your company is subdivided. Could be a fiefdom for all I care. But if you sell me something saying it does “X” I bloody expect “X” to mean “X” and not “not X”. But that just me, I’m old fashioned that way.

I'd love for Tesla to be transparent about this as well, but the onus is on the driver to understand how their car works. Maybe we need higher standards for getting a driver's license.

Luckily the modern automobile is so simple in all its functionality that anyone who wishes to purchase one can learn everything about the workings in a half hour over coffee!

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#228

Post by im_down_w_otp »

mantap wrote: post #203
im_down_w_otp wrote: post #39

I don't understand how this was a software failure. From everything I've ever read about this issue, including this piece, the failure seems very much like a model & design failure. It seems like a systems & human factors engineering failure. Not a software failure.

There were absolutely software design failures - to have two sensors but only read the value of one of them and to not even apply sanity checks to check the sensor is working (e.g. is the sensor saying that the aircraft is pointing towards the sky when it's on the ground?). It's simply crazy. The only plausible explanation is that Boeing did not perceive MCAS to be safety critical, even though it had control of the a…

That seems very specifically to be a design failure, not a software failure, no?

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#229

Post by privateSFacct »

largbae wrote: post #220
privateSFacct wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cosmic ray bit-flip of the 5 independent critical bits is very unlikely. We are being told right here on HN and in the news that this means the plane can't fly. In the US there were close calls, but fewer. If you beleive in the chain of safety better maintenance and pilot response may have saved the day a few times when faced with the MCAS problems. The safety reports from US pilots certainly sound scary (nose do…

I've got your point, and I think that knowing what we know now perhaps the planes could have been saved. I'm still not for blaming the pilots though: Would you have wanted to be the captain of a max while MCAS operated against a faulty AoA without having any way of knowing that MCAS existed or of the handling/stall risk that led to its creation?

Obviously not. There is a difference between blaming the pilots - I am not, and saying the plane was "unrecoverable" the system was "unstoppable".

Luckily if flying in the US the chance of the AoA being faulty in the first place would be a less I would argue than flying for lionair. My co-pilot might be quick to help. I might be quicker to get off automation and manually fly / trim.

Some of the self reports from the US specifically credit co-pilot assistance in averting a problem. See this one during takeoff - worst time to be heading towards ground at 1,500 FPM!

Within two to three seconds the aircraft pitched nose down bringing the VSI to approximately 1,200 to 1,500 FPM. I called "descending" just prior to the GPWS sounding "don't sink, don't sink."

Other side:

"PM's (co-pilot) callout on "descending" was particularly quick and welcome as I was just coming back to my display after looking away. System and procedures coupled with CRM (Resource Management) trapped and mitigated issue.

Synopsis

B737MAX Captain reported an autopilot anomaly in which led to an undesired brief nose down situation."

This was a full GPWS don't sink alert situation - very cleanly handled - the co-pilot BEAT the automated alert, the recovery was good. Should pilots have to deal with this? No. Did chain of safety work here? Yes - though closer to edge than one would like.

My own impression - US pilots much quicker to get off the automation / don't trust it as much / have more comfort or experience hand flying statistically maybe.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#230

Post by tw04 »

bumby wrote: post #224
tw04 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you drove to the store in a car you knew had faulty brakes and killed someone: yes you would be pursuing milk at the expense of human lives. And I guarantee you if they could prove you knew your brakes were bad, the punishment would absolutely be worse than if you just had an unpreventable accident.

This assumes Boeing had a priori knowledge that the system would cause a crash. The fact that the system safety analysis didn't label it 'catastrophic' seems to indicate they didn't know this. This doesn't absolve them of the responsibility that they should have, or that they still didn't follow their design procedures stating redundant senaors

“I didn’t KNOW removing three of the four brakes on my car would cause a crash” is an argument you could make. I wouldn’t want to stake my freedom on it.
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