Originally Posted by rfuerst911sc (Post 12169950)

The problem is no matter how robust your processes are and no matter how good your engineering is you still have humans as a possible point of failure . Let's say you are supposed to install hardware to a specific torque and torque stripe the hardware . As an assembler you are in a rush and because you have built the item for years you know how " good enough " tight feels like . So you forego the torque settings and apply the torque stripe .

Where I use to work this occasionally happened . We built military aircraft . You know how many fasteners are in an aircraft ? LOTS !!!!! This is just one simple example . Then throw in go faster . And leave no FOD . And make your rate . And come up with new ideas to lower cost . It's a meat grinder . Sometimes production catches their mistakes . Sometimes QA catches mistakes . Sometimes the customer ( DCMA ) catches the mistake , that is never good . And unfortunately sometimes there are escapes that don't get caught . That sometimes lead to catastrophic endings . Sad but true .

Ultimately in this case the investigation will determine the cause and corrective action will be implemented . Assembly instructions will be updated , QA will do follow up audits and life will go on . Engineering/production will sign off on additional mistake proofing . And the planes will continue down the line .

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins (Post 12169630)

... "predictive shimming" scheme. ...

Originally Posted by stevej37 (Post 12169327)

The worker was probably using a Crescent wrench.

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins (Post 12169630)

....Didn't Mercedes or someone learn a similar lesson prior to all of that? They left the American South in despair of the fact that they simply could not build cars there.

Originally Posted by jyl (Post 12167044)

Apparently your iPhone can fall 16,000 feet and be working fine, no damage, plenty of battery life.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-08/iphone-survives-16-000-foot-fall-helps-narrow-jet-panel-search?sref=eCUg41rA

Originally Posted by Eric Hahl (Post 12167135)

OK, so why the looped, limited recording of voice with todays tech?

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins (Post 12169401)

Harry Stonecipher, the CEO we inherited from McDonnel Douglass when they "bought us with our own money" (we essentially adopted the management practices of the failed competitor whom we purchased). Our practice was to retain design authority, theirs was to outsource that as well.

Spirit is a good example of this relationship. They used to be Boeing Wichita, but Harry sold them (along with billions in other hard assets) to bolster the bottom line in the late '90's and early 2000's. As an aside, just how long can a company show record "profits" by selling off its assets rather than by selling its products? MD fell into that trap and failed, Harry came to Boeing and went immediately down the same path.

Originally Posted by A930Rocket (Post 12169560)

Jeff definitely has more experience and is our in-house SME, but I worked at Boeing in Charleston during the great recession. I saw good work, bad work and no work (by some). My friends and I said to ourselves, airplanes must be way over engineered to have people off the street building them, and them not falling out of the sky (most of the time).

Edit. To add to Jeff’s email below, they would move the plane section to the next station, no matter how many tasks were incomplete or not done at all, just to say that they were able to move the plane on time. As the plane moves further and further down line, it gets harder and harder to do the original task. I had a friend and a neighbor, both working on the flight line and they were finishing tasks from all the different stations not completed. They were having to borrow parts from other planes to get a plane ready for service.

My wheelhouse is building homes, and I only work there during the great recession, until I could get back to building houses. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins (Post 12169630)

I remember when we started the second 787 line in Charleston. Our Everett IAM mechanics quickly adopted the acronym "SCAB" - South Carolina Airplane Builders. Every last single unit built in Charleston was flown to Everett where it spent months on the flight line getting all of the "travelers" fixed. For the rest of you, a "traveler" is a defect documented by Quality Assurance that does not get corrected where it happened, but instead "travels" with the aircraft awaiting disposition and repair. They will not hold an aircraft in position on the assembly line if it can be moved, so these "travelers" tend to accumulate.

Didn't Mercedes or someone learn a similar lesson prior to all of that? They left the American South in despair of the fact that they simply could not build cars there. The labor pool proved to be too uneducated and the "work ethic" anathema to large scale sophisticated manufacturing.

Originally Posted by Zeke (Post 12171279)

A passenger near the 'door' had his shoe and SOCK ripped off by the incident.

More startling was his observation of another passenger partially out of the plane who lost his shirt.

Originally Posted by HobieMarty (Post 12178118)

Mercedes has been doing very well in the "American South", Alabama to be exact, as well as Honda, Toyota, and others. Ever hear of a town in Alabama called Huntsville? Hmm, it has something to do with the Space Industry but I guess those people are uneducated also, huh? In Georgia we build Kia cars that are of World Class Quality and we have a bunch of awards from JD Power to prove it and are very proud of what we do and what we build there. The "American South" has some of the brightest talent that would equal or surpass other parts of the world, from builders of automobiles, to Doctors and yes, even Rocket Scientist so, your comment is way off base and is a crock of $hit, we are not a bunch of dumb barefoot hicks down here, come on down South and see for yourself.