Boeing again 47

[AZPete]

New CEO is right on for the role and the challenge. Observe.

 

[Oops409]

Yes they pull a retired 64 year old mechanical engineer out of retirement to be Boeing's next CEO. Why? Our 'system' is NOT producing the quality and quantity of employees it used too...... Look how old the Stranded Starliner Astronuts are? One is 64 also.....

And our boom and bust hiring and firing means there is never a transfer of information learned from one generation to another..... Mentoring is not happening for the most part...... Everybody is out for self only......

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

My first mentor type was a naval architect. Doing fea which he knew nothing about. He was one of the last square rigged sail boat naval types used to do jobs on the Swedish grain boats in his day.

Used to wander past me and say "what haved you ducked up today?"

"Nothing that I am aware of yet... But the day is young... "

"A wasted learning day then..."

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

He found a bug in the ANSYS program both static and nlgeom.

 

[3DDave]

There are lots of bugs in software. Finding one is like finding the Sun at dawn.

---

A continuing problem in the world is that those who are even slightly better at something keep getting selected to do more; they are allowed confidence from their past work and learn from any mistakes they make while those in the second place aren't afforded the luxury of even one bad day. The top bubble continues to rise and expand and no one wants do deal with second place, regardless of inherit merit in their work, because judging merit takes effort and those at the top have more connections, so merit doesn't matter.

A great book about this is Engineers of Dreams by Henry Petroski, where the author opines that major bridge disasters seem to happen on a regular schedule as the founders of great companies finally retire taking the lessons they learned with them and then new companies step up to make old mistakes once again.

---

This isn't a new problem. I gave it a lot of thought a while back when I heard the House of Windsor had been banking with the same bank for centuries. I wondered how it is that one family would find a bank and that both would be reliable for that length of time and why almost no other families had similar success.

It occurred to me that longevity required 3 things. The first is the ability of the founder to create something valuable.

This is rather frequent. Plenty of people start businesses and are reasonably successful at them; many grow rather wealthy.

The second is the ability of the founder to identify a successor capable of running the business and making adaptations.

This is less frequent. Often near their retirement the founder is tired/exhausted/disinterested and sells out to the highest bidder. Or they worry too much that no one is as smart or dedicated as they are and refuse to delegate even small things to children or long-time employees and the business dies with them.

The third is the key, the ability to identify a successor who in turn is capable of identifying a successor.

Almost always it is the second hand-off that fails. When it succeeds, it is because the founder put into place a process that doesn't depend on one person alone to make this decision, but into the hands of a group. Because they are able to find that successor, they are also able to find successors for themselves, creating a self-sustaining process that will operate until some condition arises that is toxic to the continued operation or the business changes to be unrecognizable except by name.

The great religions fall into this pattern. Sometimes companies do. Sometimes families do. But not forever.

That any one company fails to manage succession of top management is normal. It's the extremely rare ones that don't fail. Rome fell. Greece before that. Egypt before that. Jupiter, Zeus, Amun-Ra. All were followed, but no more.

This is almost always how business is done. It should be no surprise.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Yep which is work in progress with current USA politics.

 

[JohnRBaker]

A great book about this is Engineers of Dreams by Henry Petroski, where the author opines that major bridge disasters seem to happen on a regular schedule as the founders of great companies finally retire taking the lessons they learned with them and then new companies step up to make old mistakes once again.

And in one of his other books, Petroski explained that since the vast majority of bridges are paid for with tax-payer dollars, that bidders are motivated to continue to shave the 'safety factors' in order to be the low bidder, as that's the only way that they'll win the contract.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[3DDave]

That's more applicable in the RI bridge thread.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

3Ddave the bug was in the engineering formulation for the calculations.

Per say it wasn't a software bug.

He was a slide rule man and imperial units. It led to a change to the ASME piping codes a year later in the 90's

 

[davefitz]

I seem to recall that there was an error in the engineering fomulations of the stress in piping components that caused half of the US nuclear plants to be shutdown and retrofit back in the late 1980's. A US NRC nuclear reg commission field engineer / inspector saw that the dynamic earthquake supports for large valves at nuclear plants were undersized ( by eye) , so he studied the calculations and found the error. He " blew the whistle" but was ignored for 2-3 yrs until others confirmed the error which caused the widespread shutdowns and retrofit changes to those supports.

On a much wider scale is the impolite fact that the US ASME section I ( power boiler) code ignores thermal fatigue in high pressure piping components. That was OK for large plants that would shutdown and startup only once per year for a 50 yr life, but it is not a conservative practice for large plants that are now required to operate in a cyclic mode, where some large combined cycle plants are required to startup and shutdown twice per day ( or 15,000 times in a 20 yr life).

There are other structural issues with US industry that are resulting in corporate failures. In the 1980's ( during reagan's admin) the laws related to pensions and retirements changed which led to diposable employees; prior to that corporate memory was enhanced by ensuring valuable employees would stay with the same company for 30-40 years in order to get a pension, but the introduction of 5 yr pension vesting and IRA's ended that practice and also acted as a lobotomy to corporate memory.The second issue is the practice of using only MBA's for all management roles, and the fashionable MBA dictum to always rely on borrowed money ignores the vulnerability that comes with a sudden increase in interest rates and unsustainable debt. The third is the prevalence of " crony capitalism" and its enabling the success of otherwise substandard companies to the detrement of better companies and also its enablement of "too big to fail" catastrophic bailouts.

On top of all that is the modern fact of life that technological change is occurring faster than can be absorbed by normal human sensitivities and which cannot be restrained or moderated by laws and morals that are based on an 18th century mindset.

"...when logic, and proportion, have fallen, sloppy dead..." Grace Slick

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Davefitz this was in the yield proofing of pipes I think it's called.

When they proof the pipe taking it up to 1.1 the rated pressure to cause it to yield and work harden.

They had used a linear average yield curve based on pressure not displacement.

Basically the pipes weren't yielding enough or work hardening. I think the solution was to take them up to 1.3 pressure with a strain guage recording the post proofing yield.

The pressure testing bay was tense testing this theory.

Just take the 1.1 and 1.3 as example values it wasn't my area I just gave those it was pretty pictures. Who then started swearing when we did a full none linear analysis.

It must have been around 93/94 for this pipe issue.

 

[davefitz]

Here is the 1979 NRC letter that summarizes the need to shutdown and retrofit the earthquake dynamic piping supports at east coast nukes. It occurrred shortly after TMI and this concern was noted by none other than the USA president J E Carter. This may be one example of appointing an engineer as the CEO.

https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML9935/ML993510027.pdf

"...when logic, and proportion, have fallen, sloppy dead..." Grace Slick

 

[FacEngrPE]

Then the actual earthquake of August 23, 2011 exceeded the acceleration design criteria for the North Anna Power Station units 1 and 2. Fortunately the design has enough builders margin, that a safe shutdown from full power was achieved.
Despite "minimal damage" Dominion spent 21 million dollars (2011) inspecting, analyzing, and repairing the two plants. (

https://news.dominionenergy.com/news?item=72382)

 

[3DDave]

None of this is about Boeing.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Well it does have a link with the new CEO of Boeing.

He has just over seen the creation of the latest generation of modern cockpit and system interactions.

He is well qualified as an engineer and CEO.

I was reading about an upgrade to the A220 cockpit giving linked sidestick controls to give feedback to what the other pilot was doing. He made comment on the technical side of it not the business in it.

I really hope he succeedes sorting the Boeing utter mess out.

It's more about who is in charge of a safety critical company and how they deal with problems.

 

[Tomfh]

Another drama

https://simpleflying.com/boeing-777x-test-fleet-grounded-after-severed-thrust-link-cracks-found/

 

[3DDave]

Flight testing to find problems finds problems. News at 11.

 

[thebard3]

If a Boeing jet has a flat tire now makes headlines.

Brad Waybright

It takes competence to recognize incompetence.

 

[Tomfh]

Sure, just critical engine mounts cracking in half. No big deal….

 

[3DDave]

"This part is custom to the 777-9, and each 777-9 engine includes two of this component so there is redundancy," the company told FLYING in a statement. "We are keeping the FAA fully informed on the issue and have shared information with our customers."

The FAA confirmed that Boeing had notified the agency about the situation and was taking steps to assess the issue.

A thrust link is described as a "heavy titanium component" that is not part of the engine itself. The 777X is powered by the General Electric GE9X, which has a 134-inch front fan, sitting in a cowling measuring 11 feet across. According to GE, it is the largest and most powerful engine in the world and also has more fuel efficiency than its predecessors.

Hazarding a guess - someone in the supply chain lied about the titanium.