Starliner FINALLY made it to orbit with a crew 3

[WKTaylor]

Mission well underway... and in-orbit checkouts on-going[ul]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSp5bcV0SVI

Live streaming is enabled... but a bit boring. should dock with the ISS tomorrow.

Regards, Wil Taylor
o Trust - But Verify!
o For those who believe, no proof is required; for those who cannot believe, no proof is possible. [variation, Stuart Chase]
o Unfortunately, in science what You 'believe' is irrelevant. ["Orion", HBA forum]
o Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand everything." -Anton Chekhov

 

[IRstuff]

Correlation is not the same as causation.

Tons of companies have lost their way; being beholden to stockholders is often at the root of everything. I've worked for several companies where engineering excellence fell to the pressures of financial performance.

Another common issue is outsourcing, which Boeing was doing well before the merger with McD. Outsourcing outsources risk and cost, but subcontractors are loathe to take that risk and cut corners and one cannot get the "benefits" of outsourcing by shadow-engineering one's subs. The end result is cheap product made cheaply with little oversight.

The only place where outsourcing sort of works is in military contracts, since it's often not as cost driven; we'd often have multiple layers of oversight, which is one reason why military products are expensive.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[mfgenggear]

Well it depends where it was outsourced.
It really depends on the quality standards the company is held to and must meet the requirement.
Unfortunately outsourcing to other countries. Such as China, and it happened in Mexico as well and other countries. The skill set was not there. And companies did not adhere to the quality , and quality stands as most usa companies. Or countries like Japan, France, England, and Germany have very high craftsmanship. And others.

 

[mfgenggear]

Will
Sure seems like it.

Ir
Many times our customers tried to outsource for a lower price, could not meet the quality or outright scraped parts.
We then had a condensed schedule to remake them to prevent an assembly line stop.

One customer pulled the projects and tried to manufacture gears themselves with a start up company.
They ended up scraping millions of dollars.
We to remake or rework some inventory

 

[IRstuff]

It really depends on the quality standards the company is held to and must meet the requirement.

Sure, but that's not going to happen, simply because if you need to keep the same level of expertise needed to design and produce something for managing outsourcing, the economics disappears and those people will leave because they're bored.

The end result is that the next batch, or the one after that, of overseers won't have the experience to properly manage an outsource and quality will slowly degrade, because the ultimate arbiter of success is not quality, it's stockholder/owner financial satisfaction, regardless of what the management says or has in the corporate mission statement.

Note that US car manufacturing got it's lunch eaten by the Japanese in the 1970s and 80s because even when there was little outsourcing, lax control of quality resulted in crappy reliability, after 60 odd years of resting on US laurels.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[mfgenggear]

We all know the Japanese out did all world automobile manufactures.
Because at the time quality was really number 1,
But US I belive had an edge in aero space maybe not any more.

 

[IRstuff]

Certain, or possibly most, things simply can't hold an edge forever.

Irrespective of Boeing vs. SpaceX, Japan, Israel, Italy, Pakistan, and India have all sent missions to the Moon, in addition to the usual suspects, ESA, Russia, and China.

One of the Japanese missions had Tomy, the toy manufacturer, as a team member. Pakistan, which is often considered to otherwise be a third world country, is both nuclear and space capable.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[mfgenggear]

Yes agreed