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Indeed. If I am putting together a product and I rely on an assembly from a third party, it’s my responsibility to ensure that I have adequate QC processes in place to ensure that assemblies are made to spec before accepting them. To simply take a supplier’s word for it is negligent.

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A long time ago I was in auto sales. I had a customer who worked at a factory that produced parts for many brands of automobile.

That customer would only buy a Honda car, because they said they observed how absolutely strict Honda was regarding the quality of parts that they would purchase.

Their quality control process for a random part was so meticulous that it gave them faith in the brand as a whole.

I had a similar experience with BAE. The first time I saw they were charging the RAF £5,000 for a torch lightbulb my eyes practically fell out of their sockets - but then, a few years down the road, I found myself working with a QC department there, and their acceptance testing is extraordinary - everything gets the crap beaten out of it, thermal, endurance, vibration, radiation, you name it - and the survivors become aircraft and weapon parts.

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