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Old 5th Sep 2013, 16:12
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EEngr
 
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Seattle
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I would add that for the last three years I was the on-site support for a critical system, covering production and flight-line and with one or two exceptions perhaps, I do not recognize the 'don't care I just do my shift and leave' description of the folks working the 787 that I have seen on this thread. Most wanted to get the job done and done right and were very engaged when it came to sorting problems.
When I was there (before the 787 program) there were two schools of thought: Give the shop floor people access to any and all information, tools and whatever it takes to sort problems out. Or give them what they need and only what they need to do the planned work. Anything outside of the scheduled work flow (i.e. troubleshooting problems) was, in theory, to be designed out of the process. And Boeing management was in love with their firm grip on 'the process'.

I worked on a system that gave shop floor technicians access to QA procedures including requirements for 'out of sequence' work and systems check out. The sorts of things that one has to do in the event systems need to be taken apart, debugged and reassembled. Our group was a great supporter of the 'give then everything they need' philosophy. However, we butted heads with management that didn't want anything that allowed deviation from 'the plan'. Needless to say, we got a lot of support from the shop floor, but not from management. When it came time to retire our system and repace it with management's 'preferred process', some of the techs proposed a race between our system and the incoming one. With ours, test procedures could be located and printed within a few seconds. The new system required shop floor personnel to locate one of the few managers in possession of the proper login authority to access out of sequence procedures. It took them about 40 minutes to locate such a person.

I'm not sure how things were finally settled, as I didn't hang around for much longer.
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