Need Reality Check 7

[cadengnr]

I did 2D and 3D CAD for the government and small businesses, and thought I was pretty good at this stuff until joining my current outfit, which models and makes aircraft spare parts off old manual drawings. As I thought I was getting better, I began feeling underpaid, as I have two degrees and am getting only $18 an hour just to get my foot in the door. Right now I'm not up to complaining, though, seeing as someone on the shop floor just used my output to make 13 rivet holes instead of 14 with 13 equal spaces.

People aren't making a super-big deal of it; but I don't feel the family circus I've joined represents reality. We've got one job that's a year behind and no-one doing OT to get it out the door. Early on I found I'd mislabeled some parts I thought were identical but went on different sides of a helo; QC didn't catch it, neither did my "mentor" before they got shipped. So I pulled the file on them, notified QC and copied the boss; he didn't give a *, and in fact was annoyed we'd bothered him with it at all.

I used to do flight test engineering, where it's easier to look for someone else's mistakes. But in that world, mistakes that get through cost-big time; I feel no less about what I do now, even though we don't do flight-critical parts. I told people today, if the assemblies we're working on were supposed to be interchangeable, someone ought to be hollerin' because we'd have two pieces of costly junk on our hands.

You folks out there with certs' and who've worked for the big boys, I'd like to know if you think I'm being unreasonable with self-expectations.

 

[ScottyUK]

Find another job. Anywhere.


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Sometimes I only open my mouth to swap feet...

 

[kontiki99]

There is a difference between the QC issues that just waste money and QC issues that are could impact safety. It can be very hard to understand which is which. Despite the fact that aviation is a highly regulated industry not every error is all that important. Not every document requires expensive levels of control and archiving.

As I have migrated through different environments in aviation: military aviation, military flight test, general aviation, commercial passenger aviation, commuter ops, cargo ops, etc; I can tell you from first hand experience there are underlying fact patterns that are very different in each environment.

For example, what would be an intolerable tool control violation in a military hangar would be a don’t care in a commercial passenger aircraft hangar environment. It’s not that commercial is less safe, on the contrary. It’s just a different environment with a different culture. There are a huge number of underlying procedures, environment factors, operational factors, and human factors that are different.

In a new environment, unless you are very certain you know of something happening on specific aircraft that could, with a very high probability, induce a failure mode that will make it impossible to control or land that aircraft, I’d say just back off, do your job, and try to educate yourself on your new situation.

People that focus on being self appointed QC inspectors instead of doing what they are assigned to do are not generally all that helpful.

Most aircraft maintenance parts systems have some type of acceptance inspection requirements for parts coming in the door.

In my own environment for third party manufactures parts approved under our approval authority (FAA part 121 operation), the part/kit must match the DWG/Rev that it was made to or it’s rejected at receiving. This is very typical and happens a lot.

 

[cadengnr]

"People that focus on being self appointed QC inspectors instead of doing what they are assigned to do are not generally all that helpful."

Really?

Whatever the environment, if I catch my error even once the part's off my hands, if it might lose us a customer, safety-critical or not, I'm obliged to act on it. In this case, a call would have come months later from Europe via our broker saying, all the parts you delivered are usable, but half have the wrong dash number, and are actually mirror-image to what we're putting on that side of the helo and not what we paid for.

Although I take responsibility, the chain is also complicit. My error was caught by our underutilized, often-ignored QC expert on a reorder, for different dash numbers, because my drawings next went to him like they should have, so he could survey the job and discuss it directly with me and other engineers before manufacture.

This logical chain of events wasn't in place when I'd come aboard three months earlier; no, I was told then to hand my drawings directly to the boss' wife, who only does material purchasing with a near-zero technical background. The handoff sequence was changed between the two jobs, with no particular reason cited: pretty odd as my boss has worked there for five years and our QC guy for three. The latter frequently isn't consulted by the family on errors and QC issues, as they circle the wagons and we have people who don't know degrees from minutes trying to solve things without him.

Again, the common theme is lack of leadership from the top, and the top's disregard for others with valuable competencies outside the scope of his own experience.

 

[kontiki99]

cadengnr,

I'm not implying quality issues should be ignored.

I believe that ownership for quality is important and people that think something is wrong should notify their supervisor.

I have also seen people spend a lot of time on their hobby agenda because it's more exciting or interesting than what they are assigned to do.

There is usually someone who's job it is to prioritize and correct systematic QC problems.

It’s a business reality that they will have finite resources to work with.

The issue that looms large to the person in the drafting group may or may not be the number one QC priority for the organization as a whole.

There is a division of labor and responsibilities in every organization.

Just because you don’t understand the priorities doesn’t mean they are incorrect.

 

[kontiki99]

I'm going to retract this comment here.

“I have also seen people spend a lot of time on their hobby agenda because it's more exciting or interesting than what they are assigned to do.”

I believe it harbors a regrettable lack of respect for someone else's viewpoint.

Most people are motivivated to see the right thing happen.

Very often different people with different experience levels and from different viewpoints in an organization will assign different priority valuations to a condition or incident.

 

[cadengnr]

And just because something is someone's screwed up version of reality doesn't make it right or justified. Taking responsibility for your work doesn't mean trying to fix an entire company. I never said that was my job. Heaven help me in this case.

It appears you've read little of my posts or this thread. Right now my priority is finding a new employer who DOES NOT run his show like a hobby. But if you need a new hobby in aerospace, there'll be a seat waiting for you, if there's still a company.

 

[kontiki99]

cadengnr

You are correct. I tend to speed read a lot of the non technical posts.

I responded to your OP, but missed the fact you were concerned that no one was too concern over your own mistake!

Had I realized that, I wouldn't have responded at all.

Good luck with what ever you do.

 

[KENAT]

I think people are mixing up what to me are 2 different, though sometimes related issues.

As an example if something is made but doesn’t work for the intended task it’s typically for one of 2 reasons.

A. The design is inadequate/doesn’t work.

B. It wasn’t made properly to the design.

A. is the realm of the Engineers that design, analyze & test the design.

B. is the realm of Quality Control and the people making it.

No matter how good the basic design if it’s poorly made it won’t work. Likewise no matter how skilled/committed the manufacturing staff and how rigorous the QC department if the basic design is inadequate it wont work either.

The same is analogous to drawing creation/design communication with A being the designers/draftsmen/engineer creating the drawing & doing calcs to support it and B being Drawing Check or the person checking calcs. In fact I’ve heard of companies/government contracts where the Drawing check had to be under quality rather than design!

Drawing mistakes (or errors in analysis, or even lack of analysis) that don’t get spotted during check will (if they are serious) typically get spotted at some point during manufacture or testing. Which is more cost efficient, finding & correcting the mistake at the design stage, prototype/testing stage or full scale production?

When you have limited resource you need to balance the effort between creating the design and checking the design. Running FEA on a simple beam is maybe an example of spending more time than necessary on A, perhaps at the expense of B.

Relying solely/primarily on testing to find mistakes in designs is typically expensive and inefficient.

I’m having trouble really being clear but the point I’m trying to make is that not only must the design be good but the communication of the design must be good. Drawing check helps with the communication of the design, cross checking of calculations/models etc helps with the design. If you eliminate either you’re facing a less efficient design/manufacture process. Given the effort many companies make to improve Quality, typically as regards manufacturing I find it strange that they now spend less time ensuring quality in design communication and sometimes in design itself.

While I know it’s common these days I doubt the integrity (not sure that’s the right word) of any company that doesn’t have some design checking process.

CAE when used correctly has reduced the chance of certain types of errors, for instance most 3D CAD packages have some kind of retrieve dimension function that retrieves the model dimension so missing dimension shouldn’t be an issue. However, they don’t (at least that I’m aware of) check the basic dimensioning scheme, or the tolerance scheme or that all the required notes are there… GIGO (Garbage in Garbage out) needs to be kept in mind when relying on computers.

(sorry longer and more rambling than planned )

Good luck with the job search!

 

[ewh]

There you go again... deserves another star.

 

[KENAT]

Thanks ewh, you should start my fanclub

I just get tired of people downplaying design checking and saying that with CAD/CAE it's not necessary any more.

 

[ewh]

I've pretty much given up on trying to convert the masses on the importance of proper part definition and documentation, and am glad to see someone else explain it so well.
On the bright side, there are CAD packages out there now that can check the proper use of GD&T, if not the viability.

 

[ewh]

...and I'm sure that we're not the only ones here that feel this way.

 

[KENAT]

Yeah, some days I feel like a broken record. Or maybe like that guy with the 'end of the world is nigh' sign!

 

[prohammy]

Ken, ewh

That isn't a broken record.

I think I mentioned before that when I worked for CAT, they had done studies that quantified the cost of bad/incorrect drawings to each production unit. CAT, as you can imagine, have extensive (and I mean extensive) specifications and design procedures handed down thru generations of engineers. I forget the figures (exactly), but the cost of rework etc per machine ran into the hundreds of dollars range (i believe $550). Across the entire range of machines that they produce, that is quite a signuificant total.

Their solution was for each design facility there had to be design checker....and no drawing could be production released without the design check and subsequent correction being completed. The point CAT mad was that even though this wouldn't solve all problems now, in the long term engineers would produce more robust drawings and eventually the problem would begin to minimise

Outcome for Enginners....grab socks and pull very hard....pressure is a wonderful motivator

Kevin Hammond

Mechanical Design Engineer
Derbyshire, UK

 

[KENAT]

In that case you'll like this one:

My checker has a note written on the white board by his desk:

People do not do what you expect, they only do what you inspect!

Perhaps the thing I find hardest working in an environment where they don't have good engineering standards etc is not letting myself slip to their level.

 

[prohammy]

Ken,

I love that, couldn't sum the argument up in a more sucinct manner. Star for you.

I've had similar experiences where I have been working with companies you are/were very poor/pathetic when it came to checking engineer's drawings. It is all well and grand getting drawings out the door quickly, but once you bypass the checking phase usually all hell breaks loose.

The best way to keep people interested in checking is to keep a log of parts that don't fit/break etc that either get rejected by QC or have to be repaired in the field. Relate that to cost and most managers suddening get very interested in the checking process (especially when their manager starts to use his/her big size 12's)

But never, ever fall to their level, always remember that if you are the one who is trying to improve the dept., you are the one with your head above the semerage line....

Kevin Hammond

Mechanical Design Engineer
Derbyshire, UK