Originally Posted by
OldnGrounded
Gee, I always thought, when we were doing non-routine work, that it was especially important to document it in detail. And my systems, although certainly life-safety critical, weren't usually at risk of causing hundreds of people to fall out of the sky and die all at once.
Let there be no doubt that what (apparently) happened here is far far outside the normal ‘professional international aerospace design and manufacturing standards envelope’.
From the context situation (new model, rates up and down, nightmare tail of uncompleted work, etc…) in which this work was done, you should expect not only more special and specific ‘paperwork’ but also special teams and measures to get everything properly done. This in spite of a degrading safety culture.
Paper is only part of the equation. Of equal interest are a host of IT-systems which contain specific and contextual information. And add to that a myriad of labels, stamps, signs, colours and more. Then of course talking to the various parties and people involved.
What surprised me, I posted about that earlier, is the rather bottom up approach the NTSB selected when it said it focused on the specific event and aircraft. Having been involved in numerous of such issues, my experience has been that a top down approach by 1-3 people (combining knowledge of airplane design, manufacturing design, tool engineering, configuration management, RFC/NCR, etc) worked faster and far more effective in such urgent and complex situations. And this event certainly is such a ‘situation’. In a number of cases with a top down you did not even need the ‘paper’ to know what clearly happened.
The delayed start of the NTSB may turn out to be detrimental to the talks and outcomes. Witnesses are witnesses…
An interesting statement by Boeing is using the words “doors and doors people” … I would not want to talk to them first but to others… which puts us in the field of aerospace definitions and (serious) consequences again.
A growing risk with this situation is that a future (Congressional/FAA) solution might contain rules that are aimed at specifically at Boeing and by their nature could hurt other aerospace manufacturers. This has happened in the past with engineering design issues.
Legally, Boeing like any company in NTSB cases shall freeze and then shall deliver information. I don’t know if the small focus NTSB start will hurt the effort to get the proper information.
In the case of MH370 it took a very long time to identify recovered debris items. Months instead of a few days. Since then I wonder about the performance of Boeing configuration management and tracking and tracing systems in manufacturing.
@Based on what I am reading of the March 6th Senate hearing … have to correct the above and add that the NTSB has changed its declared investigation approach and is now going much deeper and wider in both information, people and time.