A common size easy to miss, easy to lose and drop into the nooks and crannies of the engine compartment or worse ... that's why it's feared.

Go take a look on YouTube - the elusive 10mm socket has become quite the internet celebrity. I'm not sure how or why or when it started, but it has become quite the "inside joke" among mechanics. Some guys are really having fun with this little running joke.

I worked at McDonnell Douglas in Long Beach when Boeing acquired the company. We heard that Boeing was process intensive. Eventually we coined the phrase “at Boeing, the process is the product.” I learned that to be generally true in my 18 yrs after the acquisition. So I guarantee that processes for FOD control are documented in excruciating detail. Engineers who had nothing to do with production, like myself, even had annual FOD training. Its the people in the build process that are screwing up. I bet schedule pressure is the main issue.

Speaking of FOD, a ladder was found in a C-17 fuel tank.

I read it's McDonnell Douglas which basically took over Boeing and introduced their management practices.

MDC is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Boeing Company. The CEO of MDC was Harry Stonecipher, who came from GE. He may have had an influence on Boeing management, but my pay grade was not high enough to notice.

Retired Rockwell/Boeing for me.
I would say the combination of both Rockwell & McDonnell Douglas changed the culture within Boeing from a company led by Engineers to a company led by bean counters.
Hughes satellite were payed and benefited the best of the four, the rest of us are jealous. Howard Hughes did you guys real good

How long have you been on the Internet?

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That was never my impression. You want to talk schedule pressure? Try AOG. No, FOD in production is pure disinterested laziness backed by union protection.

Absolutely.

Mine was. Most definitely.

Absolutely. When I started at Boeing, it was a veritable playground for engineers. Cost was no object. To quote the old Porsche book, "excellence was expected". It was a company for engineers, ran by engineers. The goal was to stay just solvent enough to keep the ball rolling.

Stonecipher changed all of that. Now cost was everything. For us old Boeing guys, it was incomprehensible that we had adopted the management practices of our failed rival. Quality of engineering and manufacturing was now a distant second to cost and profitability - "shareholder value" was driving the bus. A large part of why I retired...

StoneCipher is a student of Jack Welch's Mgmt practices : pressure on short term performance (For Shareholder Value) resulting in corners being cut and scandals popping up ...

We hold him as ultimately responsible for the Max debacle, even though he left many years before the program even began. It all started with 787 and his unwillingness to invest in a new airplane program. He only let us go forward by following his model of adopting "risk sharing partners" and having them invest in the program as well.

This is a far different approach than merely hiring contractors to supply various components. Volumes have been written on this, so I won't go into the details. For the purpose of this discussion, it's sufficient to mention that the 787 program wound up going tens of billions of dollars over budget, largely due to this approach. It would have been far, far cheaper to design and build it the old "Boeing way", which retains design responsibility in-house, rather than pushing it off on "risk sharing partners".

So what does this have to do with the Max, one might ask. It's simple - there was no money left to design a new aircraft, a brand new, clean sheet replacement for the 737. That was always going to be our next project after the 787. With no money to do so, it was decided to update the then 50 year old 737 one more time. And now we have seen the aero problems inherent in that patchwork, compromised design. Thanks Harry...

I worked at MD Long Beach from '86 to '89 in QA, and I absolutely agree with Jeff's basic premise. Hardly any of the hourly factory workers cared at all.

But then mgmt should know , and process should have fod check
if it can be checked in after sales, it can be checked during production.

^Boeing has processes to check FOD during production. Bottom line, workers ain't doing their job. And I still think schedule pressure is a factor in that. God forbid the line gets held up because you have to do your job.

My point exactly
You can trust lower ranks will cut corners and don't think twice about it.
That's just expected

It's Management that should make sure that doesn't happen.



I have the same problem at work

I'm in Global Support for Radiology software.
Hospitals world wide.


The regional support, is in each country.
They have their management.

We have processs and procedures that tell us "how" we all have to work


If RSN can't figure it out, they come to GSN.
Then we help out.


Problem is, the local mgmtm is country based
country mgmt is sales orientated.
They don't give a rats ass bout support procedures.
so the local RSN people.. don't either.



Obviously if the customer is so fed up bout ****ty support, they threaten not paying for the project.
Sales mgmt then get's scared.. OOOH my sales comission/bonus is in danger!!

Chit escalates to GSN and we burn overtime cleaning up their mess.

Usually we burn off 6-8 months of support backlog in 2-3 weeks.
If we are lucky, we get a thank you email.


I have been trying to fix it for 4 years from my side.
But their side don't care
Their mgmrs don't care

It's 2 completely different reporting lines , the only shared mgr is the CEO
And a CEO does not know or care bout day to day operations in support.

My mgmt says they can't fix it.
They tell me "the regional organisations have more power because well they bring in the money, we don't we are a cost"

When I was the Chief Government Pilot at the Sikorsky Factory, I helped write the rules governing acceptance test flights at all DoD contractors, including maintenance inspections, flight test and manufacturing.

Our single biggest tool was to shut down production, which was at the discretion of my boss, the head of the Defense Plant Representative Office at Sikorsky.

I did it twice for all the right reasons, much of them stemming from the manufacturing folks inability to follow the processes they signed up for on the production contract.

Aircraft production is a balancing act that I would have done the rest of my career it is that fascinating. FOD is the Canary in the Coal Mine...if there is FOD, there are accidents that are going to happen.

Yeahbutt, the design is so solid you don't have to be type rated for a different block airframe! Think of all the savings to the airlines! :rolleyes:

They just named a new board member. A Qualcomm hack
The whole board needs to go starting with Nikki Haley from South Carolina which got them their non-union assembly plant they just had to have

I can remember when mgt bragged the line moved 1-2-3 weeks ahead of schedule. What they didn’t say was how many jobs were not done or done 100%. What took x number of hours, now took 2-3 times longer.

Stonecipher's teacher, Neutron Jack kicked the bucket yesterday