and we bitch when Luigi makes a mistake

[craigclu]

I watched an engineer (under middle management pressures) release some out of spec product on a relatively small order ($9000) that led to us to paying for 500 Cadillac Northstar engines.  At least Cadillacs could pull into a wayside and the product wasn't headed to aircraft duties...  Business pressures trickle down to the point where someone makes an unfortunate decision to get past the moment.

[Orange Guzzi]

Life safety is just one factor in quality control.  Economics and innovation are bigger drivers.  Follow the money. 

[Tkelly]

I agree with all of the above but wonder why so many people feel that lawsuits are not appropriate when this stuff continues.

[Orange Guzzi]

I agree with all of the above but wonder why so many people feel that lawsuits are not appropriate when this stuff continues.

Quality in man made activity is intentional and not infallible.  Nothing is perfect and there are known and unknown risk.  It is up to Our legal justice system to determine the known and unknown liability.  As Consumers, we should be made aware of risk and failures.  This is mostly done by Marketing people.  Not who I would trust to be completely honest and transparent. 

[cloudbase]

I'd highly recommend reading Henry Petroski's "To Engineer is Human."  It's about one of my favorite engineering disciplines, failure analysis and its role in making things better.

[normzone]

Thanks, I will get that - my read list has been exhausted.

Yeah, money drives stupid decisions. Funny thing about that - the most recent version of the ISO 9001 standard has completely new sections related to top management responsibility and managing risk.

----- "  A lifetime ago I was working a fire in Oregon and the turbine engine on the Airtanker I was flying went into auto destruct mode because, as it was later determined, a mechanic had cross threaded a lubrication line onto the engine casing. Not wanting to replace the entire casing he just jammed it on and it worked for a while until it didn't. That was cause for a few exciting moments also. " -----

Yeah, some things can't be detected. A General Atomics source inspector who worked me like a rented mule one summer told me a tale of a prototype drone being tested with a chase jet behind it. The pilot radioed that he was getting a pink mist on his canopy. They lost the brakes on the drone but were able to land it with minimal damage after it ran off the runway and kept going.

In the root cause investigation, the small business supplier who had built the leaky subassembly flat out said " I didn't have the right tools for your weird thread callout so I faked it and forced it together with a press - I figured it would hold ". Unfortunately, passing static test and not coming apart is not the same thing as flying and not leaking.