This apparent anonymous comment from a Boeing employee about the number of issues happening in their qaulity system is a bit worrying:
https://leehamnews.com/2024/01/15/unplanned-removal-installa...
https://leehamnews.com/2024/01/15/unplanned-removal-installa...
So this is like when I would take apart and re-assemble everything when I was a little kid. Sometimes I would have several screws left over. It's a good thing I wasn't making airplanes!
Although it appears you would have been immensely qualified to do so.
After that, I just assumed all airplane manufactures used something like this.
If what that commenter says is true, the whole company ought to be shut down.
It’d also be an easy sell for either of the two presidential candidates - one can say he’s clamping down on incompetent elites who aren’t that elite after all; the other can talk about a profit-seeking company killing Americans.
I agree the profit-seeking company killing Americans is an easy sell with democrats and possibly even a good chunk of independents.
Obviously, Boeing and Airbus represent a duopoly. When you factor in one of them is US-based and is relied upon to deliver on certain national security projects, defense etc no politician is going to let the commercial arm fail and risk the national security arm failing too.
Also there is a lag in the system around failure. The market could decide that Boeing planes are poorly constructed, but how many accidents and deaths would have to happen in order for customer (airlines) to decide to no longer put in orders. That's not really feasible.
"Too big to fail"
No it won't. Boeing has reached too big to fail status.
They employ many millions of people directly and indirectly between commercial and military aerospace.
Boeing has reached PEAK too big to fail recently too when they announced that due to their too big to fail status, they are unable to estimate or control costs anymore and will no longer bid for any US military contracts that are fixed-price.
What you will see is billions in bailout funds given to Boeing shareholders.
It mildly more interesting to learn that Spirit was not granted access to Boeing's MES, which leads me to believe that Boeing's stance toward Spirit is more like "they're our customer and they insist on on-site inspection & repair so we'll begrudingly allow it" than "they're our customer and we have a shared interest in quality manufacturing so we'll partner with them to ensure that happens." This is a failure of leadership and extremely short-sighted, and is virtually guaranteed to result in the sort of process failures and outcomes the throwaway describes.
It's not uncommon for OEMs to take over contract manufacturer's sites, either because of a strategic decision to conduct manufacturing operations internally [again], or due to persist or pernicious quality issues arising from specific partners' operations or at specific plants. This is relatively feasible in the case of most electronics and smaller mechanical devices, and contract manufacturers operate in a state of existential fear most of the time, knowing their destiny is in the hands of a small handful of OEM customers (just look at the impact Apple's quarterly reports and projections have on partners like Foxconn, Jabil and Pegatron). It's not practical -- or even really possible due to capital expense -- to do this in aerospace. For that reason primarily, I see no alternative than for Boeing (and others) to be forced into 100% process compliance by presence of permanent external audit teams based in corporate offices and every manufacturing & assembly location. I wouldn't be surprised, too, if Boeing were forced (for political rather than anything to do with quality) to onshore more of their supply chain[1]).
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235197892...
The overall quality is incredibly high.
It sounds like someone under pressure came up with a "loophole" that was compliant with a motivated but literal reading of the CMES reporting requirement. In this case, I would wager dollars to donuts that the CMES reporting requirement only anticipated door separated/not separated.
Mental gymnastics is used to argue compliance with some technical requirement, like it is some legal proceeding where you can debate what the definition of "is" is.
No amount of formal quality process can defend against business pressure and incentives to hack the same system. Requirements dont and cant cover every corner case, like someone saying a door was never fully separated because you tied them together with a shoelace before dethatching it.
Asking if a justification passes the "red face test" is ultimately more valuable than asking if it passes a literal reading.
"Culture eats Strategy for breakfast" -- Peter Drucker (purportedly)