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Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

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Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#51

Post by throwaway2048 »

platz wrote: post #46
brojonat wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Boeing is pursuing profit at the expense of human lives To play devil's advocate, this isn't a moral statement. The author is saying this is true based on actual events.

It's retroactively true with knowledge current events, but does not answer the question 'Why did Boeing buy McDonnell-Douglas?' at that point in history with respect to "at the expense of human lives"

Lets do a thought experiment, what would Boeing do about this situation if their feet weren't being held to the fire, what did they do with their initial knowledge of it?

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#52

Post by throwaway2048 »

azinman2 wrote: post #35
seanalltogether wrote: post #12

So exactly the situation that Steve Jobs describes in his infamous interview on how sales and marketing takes over product focused companies.

What makes the interview infamous? Did you mean famous?

I suppose its infamous amongst sales and marketing folks.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#53

Post by QuesnayJr »

hannasanarion wrote: post #8

Silly corporations, pursuing profit instead of the good of everyone. Why would we expect any corporation to cut corners to improve profits, which is definitely not what private for-profit corporations are explicitly organized to accomplish? What a weird thing that nobody could have predicted. Really tickles my nose. Makes me want to sneeze actually. aaaa AAAA AAAAAACHSEIZETHEMEANSOFPRODUCTION that was a weird one, so…

Because Boeing was a government agency before it merged with McDonnell-Douglas?

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#54

Post by solatic »

jl2718 wrote: post #49
solatic wrote: post #30

> In the case of information technology-related manufacturing, research, development, and marketing are the most profitable areas to specialize. Fabricating the units and linking critical components is a low-margin race to the bottom. Inspired by this theory, companies like Boeing aim to specialize in high-margin activities and outsource the rest. This is the core point which the author seems to be trying to make, th…

There are different kinds of outsourcing. One is where a subcontractor has an existing and superior product, which incurs integration cost, but results in a superior product. The other is exporting a core competence to an inexperienced subcontractor for less cost, which incurs training costs, integration costs, loss of intellectual capital, logistics loss, and results in an inferior product.

> which incurs training costs, integration costs, loss of intellectual capital, logistics loss, and results in an inferior product

What I'm arguing is that, in order to effectively outsource, one must get good at the so-referred training and integration costs, while hedging against logistics issues. Otherwise you will get, as you prophesy, an inferior product. But I'm not convinced that's inevitable.

Of note, keeping everything in-house can result in its own logistics issues, as the organization becomes necessarily larger and must pay related overhead costs. So deciding to keep processes in-house doesn't mean you get to completely ignore "logistics loss" because you're paying a similar price in its stead.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#56

Post by dragonwriter »

hannasanarion wrote: post #36
golemotron wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er, we have through the stock market.

Lol no we don't. The richest 1% of Americans own 50% of the stocks. The top 10% of Americans own 84% of the stocks.

Arguably, just like nationalization, since control of the government is weighted similarly.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#57

Post by slededit »

brojonat wrote: post #42
platz wrote: post #2

> Why did Boeing buy McDonnell-Douglas? Because the airplane manufacturing industry is consolidating, and Boeing is pursuing profit at the expense of human lives. Was it really necessary to add the second part to explain why the merger occured? 'industry is consolidating' seems reason enough. The mixing of explanation with moralism in every sentence is grating. Put the moralism and ethics in it's own paragraph so we…

> Boeing is pursuing profit at the expense of human lives To play devil's advocate, this isn't a moral statement. The author is saying this is true based on actual events.

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.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#58

Post by jl2718 »

hannasanarion wrote: post #8

Silly corporations, pursuing profit instead of the good of everyone. Why would we expect any corporation to cut corners to improve profits, which is definitely not what private for-profit corporations are explicitly organized to accomplish? What a weird thing that nobody could have predicted. Really tickles my nose. Makes me want to sneeze actually. aaaa AAAA AAAAAACHSEIZETHEMEANSOFPRODUCTION that was a weird one, so…

The problem with ‘seize the means of production’ is that it has roughly zero value. When I worked in manufacturing, I saw that we bought capital equipment for billions and sold it 3-5 years later for millions. Everything in between, all the profit we squeezed from it, was due to the combined efforts, knowledge, loyalty, and goodwill of the employees that worked there. A good CEO, greedy as he may be, understands this implicitly. Wall St maybe not so much right now.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#59

Post by pinkfoot »

hannasanarion wrote: post #36
golemotron wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er, we have through the stock market.

Lol no we don't. The richest 1% of Americans own 50% of the stocks. The top 10% of Americans own 84% of the stocks.

Is it really true that all the pension funds in USA - let alone all the foreigners (rich and poor) - together own only 16% of the shares in USA listed public companies.

I call BS.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#60

Post by CydeWeys »

dmix wrote: post #3

Has anyone considered that the MCAS bug was just simply nasty and difficult to detect in their simulator? It’s easy to look back with retrospect and make sweeping judgements about the entire company and the FAA. But fundamentally this was all over, as the author mentions, a single software bug and a lack of backup sensors to offset the risk. In addition it was the technical pilots who asked for the stick to be harder…

"The MAX was otherwise a very safe plane was it not?"

Huh? The MAX was the most unsafe major new plane in ... something like decades. You can't make a statement excluding all the bad and then trying to say it's good. The bad is exactly what you're getting at here.

And even apart from that, the 737 is an obsolete, decades-old design. The only reason they're still making new iterations of it is because of type ratings requirements; if you actually wanted to make a great plane, you'd never base it on the 737. It has ancient analog gauge displays (which are now simulated digitally), doesn't use electronic flight controls, is too low to the ground leading to increased potential of foreign object debris into the engines, and as a consequence of this the newer more efficient jet engines don't even fit underneath the wings properly and hence had to be shifted forward into an unstable position that necessitated MCAS.

There's no two ways about it, there's nothing good about the 737 MAX, even apart from all the crashes.

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