Boeing engineer tells senate about 'manufacturing shortcuts' [video]
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John Mitchell Barnett (February 23, 1962 – March 9, 2024) was an American whistleblower who was known for his substantiated safety and quality reports to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) about Boeing's production of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and death which occurred amidst a lawsuit he brought against Boeing. Barnett worked in quality control at Boeing for 32 years, serving for seven as a manager in North Charleston, South Carolina.
In March 2024, after he failed to report for his third day of deposition, he was found dead of a gunshot wound.
which we all know is the only real solution for the problem here
The economist-led America of today? Well, I’ve got a modern “made in usa” through hole socket set in the garage with a shattered 13mm socket. I could tell from the second I lifted the first socket they had saved some cash on the materials.
Policy type discussions today aren’t fundamentally based on whether something is physically possible or whether a thing would be desirable - discussions today are inevitably founded on cost, they will often touch on other subjects for sure but the one lens that cannot be discarded is the cost one.
It’s ok. I’ve collected a few nick nacks from NASA’s glorious days to keep me cheered up.
they will often touch on other subjects for sure but the one lens that cannot be discarded is the cost one
Dont get me wrong swiss army knives are great but they cant hold a candle to American manufacturers.
The term "Swiss Army Knife" is trademarked by Victorinox. There used to be another manufacturer (Wenger), but they got bought by Victorinox and the brand disappeared in 2013.
I'll stay with Spyderco for actual knives.
On a more serious note, it crushes my soul to see that US citizens, given all the US dystopian problems still cling to old (and granted: impressive!) victories, while there seems to be not a scintilla of optimism for the challenges ahead.
This is like worshipping the flame, when you should carry on the fire. The spirit that made the moon landing possible is the opposite of what is displayed here.
The Swiss healthcare system is based on compulsory private health insurance.
We have compulsory health insurance which is deducted from our pay slip. On top of that you have an extra insurance which is or not compulsory depending where you work.
We do have, however, a decent basic coverage for people who do not work, immigrants, ...
2- I'm from Colorado, where there is also "drinking water quality lakes" (ever seen a Coors can?)
3- No one is holding onto this victory, the challenges the US faces are no more or less dystopian than any other country.
I'm tired of people complaining about a country they barely know anything about. Go outside and meet your neighbors, stop watching doom and gloom YouTube videos all day.
I don't own one because I can never tell where in the world I'm allowed to carry one.
Its beautiful and since you brought up Leatherman I shall boast. :)
Not since the 80s have I seen anyone want to buy an American car for example.
The correct choice for a car is a Japanese one
Where are you getting that from? Toyotas are famously some of the most reliable cars you can buy.
But the dealer acknowledged they had seen this as a somewhat systemic problem.
Then in winter, I had my HUD just shut off with no explanation. It came back a day later, worked ok since.
Then again, you need to treat the bottom of your car as soon as you buy it because it tends to corrode like mad. You don’t want your car to disintegrate on you in five years, do you?
I gather higher end models like RAV4 get more QC, and mine are mostly first world problems, but you can see repair-unfriendly and “just buy a new one” attitude creeping in.
https://www.adac.de/rund-ums-fahrzeug/unfall-schaden-panne/a...
See the table "Modellvergleich: Sieger & Verlierer" and navigate to the car category you want to see.
The electronics are horrendous. The design is horrendous (inside). It runs like any other average car.
You would think being more successful would breed amazing products and innovation but it just breeds laziness and not-good-enough products.
I also think that japan competed with american cars on quality, and eventually american cars improved (but I think the damage was done)
Suspicion: It's one huge cartel driving quality down, for if one producer made a low price-quality dash the others would crash and burn
We have been hollowing out this for profit for years.
And even if it is a genuine design I always wonder if customer satisfaction or the shareholder value is more important when push comes to shove. As I had expensive things that should last a lifetime fail only to find out that it was just a metal case around the same plastic crap you'd find in a product one magnitude cheaper.
Not to say that this affects all areas, certain specialized equipment from the US is still top notch, e.g. SoundDevices with their audio recorders or similar equipment.
Not to say that this isn't also a trend found in products from elsewhere. The way I see it "Made in $X" doesn't mean a lot anymore. E.g. it could mean that top engineers from $X designed a product that is manufactured with the tightest tolerances on the best machines in a way that it lasts forever, or it could mean that a underpaid engineer was pressed by beancounters to replace the last metal piece with a plastic one and it has been injection molded by a subcontractor that does that as a high-volume, low-margin filler job they only take to fill the gaps in their production schedule.
Made in the US or Made in Germany doesn't mean anything at all, because bean counters extracted the value connected to that trust over the past decades. Now there is no trust left to extract.
This is evident from the textbooks that I used to read or some of the old manuals especially explaining science and engineering when I was young. While in my graduation I desperately wanted to come to the US to work in some of the top engineering companies. Unfortunately I couldn't and I now see a steady decline in engineering work. All I see is silly sw engineering. Manufacturing has become non existent. Some of the vintage electronics stuff the engineers pulled before is very inspiring. This same thing applied to British engineering which is synonymous to poor quality these days.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/what-has-happened...
Literally all of us benefit from long term healthy competition.
This begs the question - how fucked up bonus incentives must be set that management chose to tank the company in such a way. Very few people are genuinely evil, but these sociopaths always follow the path of money (and power).
Maybe for such strategic companies government needs to set the rules, or at least veto them and have some basic oversight. Duopoly ain't completely free market realm.
management chose to tank the company
Nothing "idiot" about that. Evil is the right word.
His mentor was a different breed, and likely what we need again in the US.
I’ve come to believe we don’t know how, and the national security risks and implications are huge.
It is time to realize that the practises of a certain type of business manegerial class are extremely damaging to wide parts of what makes our society function.
The good times for US manufacturing where times where engineers still ran businesses to some degree. Nowadays it seems that you get managment that comes in and treats a major airplane manufacturer the same as a grocery chain, a fastfood franchise or any other type of business. That means: trying to cut corners, removing all the cladding, externalizing all the costs for a short term win and make sure to be gone once that hidden debt comes due.
This is not sustainable, but it generates a lot of money for those people.
I am all for holding such types accountable after the fact. You removed X against the advice of your engineers and it lead to catastrophic failure? Jail.
You mean like McDonnell Douglas?
[1]: https://www.sasgroup.net/about-sas/the-fleet/ (instagram post section)
I would say that a smart demand questioned by an idiot is worse but I'm no elon musk
What's amazing to me is that even with such a degradation in culture and safety, the individual planes are still somehow worth more money than most humans will cumulatively see in their lifetime. I do wonder how quickly that will shift if they don't address the serious problems that have come to light lately though.