Another brand new 737 Max crashes

[kach22i]

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins

Let's get back on track here. I was kind of reluctant to discuss the South Carolina thing, but what the hell, I'll share my experiences and observations.

Our union mechanics lovingly refer to them as the "South Carolina Airplane Builders" - SCAB. They have nothing but disdain for their Southern counterparts. Not just because they feel they are stealing their jobs, but mostly because they are tired of cleaning up their mess, airplane after airplane.

I cannot remember how many 787's roll out of Everett compared to SCAB, but I think I remember the numbers were about half a dozen or more out of Everett for every one out of South Carolina, and South Carolina has more people working on them. To add insult to injury, every airplane leaving SCAB flies directly to Everett, where it spends some time on the flight line getting reworked to correct all of its problems, and finished up so that it is ready for delivery.

Countless people from Everett have gone to South Carolina to try to help them through their production problems. They universally come back with two observations: the work ethic down there is quite poor, and the level of education of their mechanics and assembly workers is not high enough to allow them to work on something as complex as an airplane.

There is a certain minimum level of reading comprehension required to perform this kind of work. In airplane building, there are detailed work instructions that need to be read and understood, drawings that need to be read and understood, and that kind of thing. Their typical public school system high school graduate is incapable of doing either.

Much has been written about the sad state of affairs of their public education system down there. In speaking with their engineers, they will readily admit that anyone who can afford to send their kids to private schools does so and, as a result, they see no reason to adequately fund their public schools. The only kids attending public schools are only there because their parents cannot afford anything else. This is where SCAB's mechanics and assemblers come from. They function at what most of us would consider about a fifth grade level, if that. They simply do not possess the tools to do what they are being asked to do.

The guys that are tasked with going down there to help are met with that, and their horrible work ethic. Trying to deal with them quickly sees one rejected as some damn Yankee know-it-all, trying to tell these good ol' boys how to do their jobs. They're having none of it. They get pretty damn hostile about it... Even their own engineers, as a matter of fact, get the same treatment to some degree. Most of them are from somewhere else anyway, so they have an equally difficult time with these lazy, uneducated, stand off-ish factory workers.

I believe most companies who manufacture products of even modest complexity who have looked to The South as a ready pool of cheap labor have eventually left in frustration. It gets to be pretty obvious fairly quickly what they are up against. I wonder how much longer this situation will be allowed to fester. The only way I see it surviving is if all of the labor winds up being imported from somewhere else. Boy, talk about some local friction and unrest if it ever comes to that...

One of your better posts Jeff, I wonder how it would be received in PARF?

Figure 1. North America – motor vehicle industry footprint, 2010
http://revel.unice.fr/eriep/index.html?id=3369


Most of the North American automobile plants have figured out how to achieve quality despite regional differences.

Maybe instead of the automobile companies borrowing executives from Boeing, Boeing should be recruiting from the automobile industry?

Just a thought.

[Jeff Higgins]

Originally Posted by kach22i

He attacked me first you mindless idiot butt sniffer.

I did nothing of the kind, and everyone on this forum knows it.

Kach, it's pretty obvious by now that you are one of the least respected members of this forum. Bald faced lies such as this, and childish accusations of "he started it!", only serve to further cement your position. Don't you ever get tired of this?

[A930Rocket]

I worked at SCAB (lol) for a few years when the home building industry was in the crapper. I ran the Brotje machine in the 19 bldg.

Although there were some good workers, there were a lot of people (and managers!) that didn’t need to be there. Or anywhere. I saw stoopid **** happen all the time. Some friends and I used to joke that the 787 must be really over engineered to fly with all the mistakes that happened.

The funny thing was management wanted the plane moving down the line no matter how many jobs were not done. We moved it ahead of schedule! Yay!

My neighbor works on the flight line. Smart guy with all the certs and education. He hates it. A friend with 25 years on the flight line in the Air Force said the same thing.

I got out as soon as I could to go back to building homes and hope I never have to fly on a 787.

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins

Let's get back on track here. I was kind of reluctant to discuss the South Carolina thing, but what the hell, I'll share my experiences and observations.

Our union mechanics lovingly refer to them as the "South Carolina Airplane Builders" - SCAB. They have nothing but disdain for their Southern counterparts. Not just because they feel they are stealing their jobs, but mostly because they are tired of cleaning up their mess, airplane after airplane.

I cannot remember how many 787's roll out of Everett compared to SCAB, but I think I remember the numbers were about half a dozen or more out of Everett for every one out of South Carolina, and South Carolina has more people working on them. To add insult to injury, every airplane leaving SCAB flies directly to Everett, where it spends some time on the flight line getting reworked to correct all of its problems, and finished up so that it is ready for delivery.

Countless people from Everett have gone to South Carolina to try to help them through their production problems. They universally come back with two observations: the work ethic down there is quite poor, and the level of education of their mechanics and assembly workers is not high enough to allow them to work on something as complex as an airplane.

There is a certain minimum level of reading comprehension required to perform this kind of work. In airplane building, there are detailed work instructions that need to be read and understood, drawings that need to be read and understood, and that kind of thing. Their typical public school system high school graduate is incapable of doing either.

Much has been written about the sad state of affairs of their public education system down there. In speaking with their engineers, they will readily admit that anyone who can afford to send their kids to private schools does so and, as a result, they see no reason to adequately fund their public schools. The only kids attending public schools are only there because their parents cannot afford anything else. This is where SCAB's mechanics and assemblers come from. They function at what most of us would consider about a fifth grade level, if that. They simply do not possess the tools to do what they are being asked to do.

The guys that are tasked with going down there to help are met with that, and their horrible work ethic. Trying to deal with them quickly sees one rejected as some damn Yankee know-it-all, trying to tell these good ol' boys how to do their jobs. They're having none of it. They get pretty damn hostile about it... Even their own engineers, as a matter of fact, get the same treatment to some degree. Most of them are from somewhere else anyway, so they have an equally difficult time with these lazy, uneducated, stand off-ish factory workers.

I believe most companies who manufacture products of even modest complexity who have looked to The South as a ready pool of cheap labor have eventually left in frustration. It gets to be pretty obvious fairly quickly what they are up against. I wonder how much longer this situation will be allowed to fester. The only way I see it surviving is if all of the labor winds up being imported from somewhere else. Boy, talk about some local friction and unrest if it ever comes to that...

[kach22i]

Originally Posted by javadog

Yeah, but you’re the one that never lets it go. It wasn’t even on this thread, so **** off.

Liar

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins

I did nothing of the kind, and everyone on this forum knows it.

Liar

Anyone can go back and check this thread, lairs get no respect from me.

They might get a laugh out of me, but no respect.

[kach22i]

Originally Posted by A930Rocket

I got out as soon as I could to go back to building homes and hope I never have to fly on a 787.

Sounds similar to people visiting food production facilities and then swearing off eating chicken or hot dogs again.

Once you know how the sausage is made it sort of changes you.

The Boeing 737 MAX Is 1 Step Closer to Flying Again -- but Don't Expect to See It Soon
Airlines are removing the Boeing 737 MAX from their summer schedules, even as Boeing continues to make progress towards getting its most important jet family back in the air.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/04/20/boeing-737-max-is-1-step-closer-to-flying-again.aspx

On April 11, Boeing (NYSE:BA) announced that it had created a software fix designed to prevent a repeat of the tragic crashes of two 737 MAX 8 planes over the past six months. CEO Dennis Muilenberg stated that the aerospace giant had already conducted 96 test flights using the updated software -- including one with him on board -- to ensure that the plane is now working as intended.

An FAA panel released the findings of its initial review of the new software last week, calling it "operationally suitable." Nevertheless, the Boeing 737 MAX still isn't close to getting back in the air. In fact, Southwest Airlines (NYSE:LUV), American Airlines (NASDAQ:AAL), and United Continental (NASDAQ:UAL) all recently extended their proactive cancellations of 737 MAX flights well into the summer season.

Sounds like the 737 is out of service until at least August.

On April 11, Southwest Airlines announced that it had removed the 737 MAX from its flight schedule through Aug. 5. A few days later, American Airlines followed suit, taking the 737 MAX out of its schedule through Aug. 19.

[javadog]

Originally Posted by kach22i

Liar


Liar

Anyone can go back and check this thread, lairs get no respect from me.

They might get a laugh out of me, but no respect.

Your dislike for Higgins goes back to well before this thread even started. And no, you can’t let it go, because you in the last day, you have continued this stupid obsession of years.

Face it, knucklehead, nobody here respects you. Nobody.

[kach22i]

Originally Posted by javadog

Your dislike for Higgins goes back to well before this thread even started. And no, you can’t let it go, because you in the last day, you have continued this stupid obsession of years.

Face it, knucklehead, nobody here respects you. Nobody.

You have it the other way around, he keeps attacking me with his snarky remarks and pot shots.

My only failure is that I took the bait this time.

Javadog, you also seem to have some sort of obsession with me. Please get over it, it isn't good for your health.

Now back on topic............the 737.

Another case of Boeing milking an old product while Airbus produces a new one?

Mar 16, 2018
Boeing’s “Cash Cow” milks out its 10,000th plane
https://www.airlinereporter.com/2018/03/boeings-cash-cow-milks-out-its-10000th-plane/

The 737 is nicknamed the “cash cow” internally. Boeing hit quite the milestone by manufacturing its 10,000th 737 in mid-March...........

The 737 has come a long way since it was introduced in 1967.................

Having made several trips to the Renton factory while I worked for Boeing, the thing that struck me about the main facility was how quiet it was..........

Another thing that keeps the noise down is the fact that the largest part of the plane isn’t even made by Boeing, nor is it done in its Renton factory. Fuselages for the planes are made by Spirit Aerosystems in Wichita, Kansas..........

As noted in my previous story on the success of the Airbus A321, Boeing is constantly being pressured on price by Airbus.....

How much truth is there to the following statement?

It’s widely known in the airplane sales industry Airbus can literally give planes away, with the carrot that the purchasing airline then remain an Airbus customer for future orders. Boeing’s strategy is to provide a quality product and charge more for it, contending their in-service performance is better than Airbus, so a more expensive plane that isn’t in the maintenance shop is ultimately better for airlines.

[red-beard]

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins

Let's get back on track here. I was kind of reluctant to discuss the South Carolina thing, but what the hell, I'll share my experiences and observations....

I worked for GE Power for many years. The Gas Turbine division opened a new plant in Greenville in 1973 for the new large turbines (Frame 7 & 9). Somewhere in the 1980's, the smaller machine production (Frame 5 & 6), moved to Greenville. There were some issues with the small machines (design fixes that never made it to the drawings) made in Greenville. But production has been there for almost 50 years and all production there for over 30 years.

We had the same stories from the UNION mechanics and assemblers in Schenectady as you have in Everette.

If there is an issue of low quality, it is a management/plant culture issue, not a worker issue.

[sammyg2]

If everyone ignored the troll and did not respond, he would eventually end up talking to himself.
That would get old.


I don't even talk to myself anymore, I don't care for his attitude

[billybek]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

I don't even talk to myself anymore, I don't care for his attitude

I still talk to myself but I stopped listening...
I agree on the feeding the trolls, Sammy. Has ruined many good threads here.

[dafischer]

I always talk to myself, but always lose the argument.

[oldE]

Originally Posted by kach22i

One of your better posts Jeff, I wonder how it would be received in PARF?

Figure 1. North America – motor vehicle industry footprint, 2010
ERIEP


Most of the North American automobile plants have figured out how to achieve quality despite regional differences.

Maybe instead of the automobile companies borrowing executives from Boeing, Boeing should be recruiting from the automobile industry?

Just a thought.

I wouldn't think there was a great deal of skill level equality between the aerospace and the automotive industries, aside from Pagani and Koenigsegg.
Not too many people are in a position to pay for that level of engineering and craftsmanship.

Best
Les

[gordner]

Planes are not special, they are just machines, just like a car. There is stringent quality control in production that may exceed that in automotive, but all the same, airplanes are pretty basic machines. Most of the tech in aircraft is 50 years plus old, it takes forever for systems advancements to make their way into aviation due to the certification costs and time. Systems are almost always mature, tried and true before they will implement in an aircraft. At the end of the day, assembly line jobs are the same in aviation as any other industry, carried out by the lowest paid person they can get to do the job. The control doesn't come from the worker on the floor, it comes from the quality systems associated with the process.

[Seahawk]

Originally Posted by gordner

Planes are not special, they are just machines, just like a car. There is stringent quality control in production that may exceed that in automotive, but all the same, airplanes are pretty basic machines. Most of the tech in aircraft is 50 years plus old, it takes forever for systems advancements to make their way into aviation due to the certification costs and time. Systems are almost always mature, tried and true before they will implement in an aircraft. At the end of the day, assembly line jobs are the same in aviation as any other industry, carried out by the lowest paid person they can get to do the job. The control doesn't come from the worker on the floor, it comes from the quality systems associated with the process.

I agree.

At the Sikorsky Factory nearly every issue I faced was caused by management, not the engineers, foremen and workers.

In a fit of revelation, Sikorsky decided to take my challenge of doing a Kaisan event (Six Sigma in the 90's). The event covered processes and practices in administrative, engineering and manufacturing - initially focused on my bailiwick, the flight test and production hanger.

We found so much institutionalized stupidity that UT/Sikorsky expanded the Kaisan event to include the whole Bridgeport facility. Factories are all about human nature and human's compete against each other, often to the detriment of quality and efficiency.

We reduced the flight test acceptance process (leading to "selling" the aircraft to the government via what is called a DD-250) from 14 days to 12. Common sense stuff.

We also found that there were DEAD PEOPLE still getting paper copies of the DD-250 sent to their old drop box(es).

[Seahawk]

Originally Posted by afterburn 549

The FFA has created so much red tape involved in certifying anything new it is just plain cheaper to use the old crap.
If anyone wants to put a new and better part on their certed AC, they cant! Not without endless hoops to jump.
This limits progress.

Out of autoclave composites on commercial aircraft is but one example. We proposed OOA parts for Airbus (better and cheaper than the current parts - no questions asked) but the certification process was too daunting.

The Airbus rep was nearly in tears: Like any manager he had cost reduction goals and he knew OOA composite parts we could make was the answer.

[Deschodt]

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins

Our union mechanics lovingly refer to them as the "South Carolina Airplane Builders" - SCAB.

Damn, Jeff, that is both fascinating and scary stuff... Can't help but wonder what gets missed even on the rework... Far cry from the early "if it ain't boeing, I ain't going..." - Though I'm sure The union folks all over Airbus plants are exactly the same (though possibly better educated as the school system is Europe isn't too bad). Crap.

What's scary to me in the end is - the more you know, the scarier this world gets. In every field that I either know experts in, and the very few I consider myself knowledgeable in (hospitals and software) - it's exactly the same... There are %uckwits at every level that can't seem to get fired and produce shoddy work that can kill people, and everywhere the desire to make a buck overrides safety and reason (oh and also the media is full of $hit on almost every technical topic they ever report on)... I liked it more when I was young and blissfully unaware and thought adults were smart. Now I fully realize the idiot that could barely tie his own shoelaces back in highschool has a job, he could be building airplanes, coding driverless automation, digging into gas lines, or just texting while driving and plowing into me...
They're everywhere.. Idiocracy has arrived.

[flipper35]

The mechanical bits of planes are simple, the software that (helps you) fly them is not.

[Jeff Higgins]

There is indeed some correlation between aircraft manufacturing and, say, automobile manufacturing, but there are also some important differences. The differences are driven by production volumes. What would be considered a very short, custom, or even "bespoke" production run in the automotive world, for example, might very well be considered a very long production run in aircraft manufacturing.

In what we refer to as the "back shops", or the detail part and small assembly part of aircraft production, they can often be found building the same thing, in the same configuration, day after day, week after week, month after month, and even year after year. These are the parts and assemblies that go on each aircraft (of the same model) for each and every aircraft configuration for each and every customer. It is at this level that we have found that a less skilled, less educated workforce can produce the quality desired. In other words, if it is repetitive enough, and they do enough of it, they get good at it.

Once we get beyond that level, however, aircraft manufacturing veers sharply away from automotive and other such production. There is a saying at Boeing that "every airplane is a prototype", and that really is no exaggeration. Once customer specific, or sub model specific differences enter the picture, we will see no two airplanes on the very same assembly line that are alike.

And that is where the problems start. You can't just "build it like the last one", because that last one was significantly different than this one. The airplane to airplane variation, even within the same "customer block", is astonishing to anyone not familiar with it. This is where the problem solving skills, the ability to work through and solve new and different problems each and every day plays a vital role in airplane manufacturing.

And, ultimately, this is where SCAB fails. They are incapable of working at that level. They can perform the repetitive work just fine, and crank out some very high quality work. No doubt about it. But when it gets down to assembling a new and different variation of a major assembly or installation, they are at a loss. This is what has driven both their markedly lower production rate, and their markedly lower quality.

And no, one cannot "manage" their way out of this. The only level at which this is a management problem, or a processes problem, is in that management decided to try to build an item of this complexity with that workforce to begin with. Believe me, SCAB has been the focus of a great deal of management attention, "Kaisan" type process improvement efforts, endless coaching by folks from Everett who are doing this successfully - all for naught.

One cannot make a silk purse from a sow's ear. They need to understand the limits of manufacturing capability in that region. And yes, a large part of the problem lies in the fact that Boeing has recruited high level management personnel from the automotive and similar mass production industries. These execs didn't "grow up" in the world or aircraft manufacturing, and cannot understand the nuances of it. It's just another product to them. They have tried and tried to introduce automotive style mass production techniques and philosophies to aircraft manufacturing and have failed miserably. The methods employed to manufacture tens of thousands of the exact same thing just do not transfer well when a "long" production run is several dozen, or maybe a few hundred at the most. That, and the problem solving skills required when "every one is a prototype" are vastly under appreciated by these folks. "We build cars there, why can't we build airplanes there?"...

[Scott R]

Today a lot of human capital was dropped.

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by Seahawk

I agree.

At the Sikorsky Factory nearly every issue I faced was caused by management, not the engineers, foremen and workers.

In a fit of revelation, Sikorsky decided to take my challenge of doing a Kaisan event (Six Sigma in the 90's). The event covered processes and practices in administrative, engineering and manufacturing - initially focused on my bailiwick, the flight test and production hanger.

We found so much institutionalized stupidity that UT/Sikorsky expanded the Kaisan event to include the whole Bridgeport facility. Factories are all about human nature and human's compete against each other, often to the detriment of quality and efficiency.

We reduced the flight test acceptance process (leading to "selling" the aircraft to the government via what is called a DD-250) from 14 days to 12. Common sense stuff.

We also found that there were DEAD PEOPLE still getting paper copies of the DD-250 sent to their old drop box(es).

Old saying: "everyone knows what's wrong except those with the power to fix it".

If you can get management to actually pay attention to the details, you can really streamline the process.
Unless your managers are idiots.