Author Topic: Ars Technica article on SLS/Boeing  (Read 11883 times)

Offline Vultur

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Re: Ars Technica article on SLS/Boeing
« Reply #20 on: 08/09/2024 09:11 pm »
If it's broader than aerospace, is it partially a generational shift thing? (The more numerous baby boom generation being mostly retired now, etc)

When the economy is good, companies struggle to find workers, which makes it a) high cost to the company to fire an ineffective worker (because it's cheaper to retrain than to find and hire a replacement), and b) low cost to the worker to get fired (because everyone is hiring so it's easy to find another job).  This makes the penalty for shoddy workmanship almost non-existent.

As a Gen Xer, I'd love to blame the young'uns for this, but I think it's more of a zero-interest-rate phenomenon, which affects workers across all generations.

I actually wasn't blaming the younger generations, I was asking about whether there is a smaller number of relevant workers in the post baby boom cohort (now in their mature career phase) vs the baby boom cohort (now mostly retired). Especially in places like Louisiana which (unlike neighboring TX) is not seeing a lot of people moving to it, Louisiana population has actually slightly declined in recent years.

The question wasn't about generational work ethic, it was about workforce available.
« Last Edit: 08/09/2024 09:15 pm by Vultur »

Online DaveS

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Re: Ars Technica article on SLS/Boeing
« Reply #21 on: 08/09/2024 09:14 pm »
Also keeo in mind that the area did lose a significant amount of the experienced work force after hurricane Katrina back in 2005. It was found that part of the root cause for the ET hydrogen leaks (STS-119, 126 and 133) was that they all used carrier assemblies that had been improperly aligned during integration with the intertank at MAF due to an inexperienced workforce. So things can be traced back quite far back.
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Online Eric Hedman

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Re: Ars Technica article on SLS/Boeing
« Reply #22 on: 08/09/2024 11:55 pm »
If it's broader than aerospace, is it partially a generational shift thing? (The more numerous baby boom generation being mostly retired now, etc)

When the economy is good, companies struggle to find workers, which makes it a) high cost to the company to fire an ineffective worker (because it's cheaper to retrain than to find and hire a replacement), and b) low cost to the worker to get fired (because everyone is hiring so it's easy to find another job).  This makes the penalty for shoddy workmanship almost non-existent.

As a Gen Xer, I'd love to blame the young'uns for this, but I think it's more of a zero-interest-rate phenomenon, which affects workers across all generations.
I deal with lots of companies in the sheet metal fabrication industry.  There is another big problem that has existed in welding for the last thirty years.  Not nearly enough people want to do it.  A friend of mine from mine ended up running a program at a local technical college training students in industrial arts including welding, machining, bending, cutting (Turret punches, lasers,etc.), additive manufacturing, etc.  They have been trying for a long time to recruit high school students for their programs with just not enough success to meet industry demand.

Online sdsds

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Re: Ars Technica article on SLS/Boeing
« Reply #23 on: 08/10/2024 05:18 am »
It's easy to blame corporate management for not attracting and retaining a skilled workforce. Organized labor plays a role too. In the Seattle area, the International Association of Machinists District 751 (i.e. the Boeing machinists union) offers the Machinists Institute to provide education and training to build the local workforce.

https://www.machinistsinstitute.org/about-machinists-institute
https://www.iam751.org/

Are the welders at Michoud represented by a union?
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Offline dfp21

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Re: Ars Technica article on SLS/Boeing
« Reply #24 on: 08/10/2024 05:43 am »
What happens to a diligent worker at Boeing who complains about poor quality?  (You can google that if you don't already know).

Yes it is BOEING MANAGEMENT CULTURE that produces low-to-mediocre quality products at high-to-insane prices.

Online VSECOTSPE

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Re: Ars Technica article on SLS/Boeing
« Reply #25 on: 08/27/2024 10:07 pm »
This might deserve it's own thread.  And I don't know that I have an actual point, just a lot of observations that could lead to a point.  Boeing having unskilled labor isn't just a Boeing problem.  Another program I work on (that I'm not comfortable outing), is 1) Firm Fixed Price, 2) way behind schedule, 3) engineering talent is leaving the program.  It's easy to just blame management, but I also think many other things are happening at the same time.  NASA moving to FFP contracts puts tremendous pressure on companies to reduce costs, which translates into lower resources (pay, oversight, etc).  Add to that, that new commercial space companies rarely subcontract work (everyone is following SpaceX and Blue in bringing everything that they can in house), and it's hard to be an aerospace engineer these days (unless you live in Seattle, Denver, or LA).

It's also easy to point to SpaceX and argue that they are very good at FFP, but as others have mentioned, they are a unicorn.  SpaceX doesn't have to make a profit, they get don't get funding at the whim of outside investors, talented engineers seek THEM out to work 60-80 hrs a week for 40 hrs a week salary.  SpaceX is a truly incredible company with incredible people.  That is not the same bar to hold everyone else to. 

No doubt, there are usually strains in most labor markets, and they may be especially acute in the space sector these days.  That said, EUS is critical path element of the agency’s huge flagship program, and it involves human space flight.  This isn’t a some smallsat that will cost investors millions if it fails.  This is a launch vehicle that will cost taxpayers billions, delay the nation’s most visible civil space goals for years, and kill or nearly kill four people if it fails.  I think they buried the lede, but the IG report points out the flight safety implications of the bad welds in a couple places:

Quote
Nonetheless, according to both DCMA and NASA Safety and Mission Assurance officials, the unusually high number of stamp warranty CARs reflects the seriousness of the nonconformity, and changing certified work order data without retention of historical information could increase the risk to the flight vehicle...

Moreover, quality control deficiencies, if not identified and corrected, could increase safety risk to the integrated spacecraft...

To borrow from the famous book on the Challenger accident, this is normalization of deviance.  It’s one thing to keep building after DCMA identifies a few deficiencies/nonconformities.   It’s another after DCMA identifies over 70+ deficiencies/nonconformities over the course of more than a year..  On a project this big or on a project involving astronauts, there is no excuse not to stand down until the workforce is properly trained and qualified or until qualified workers can be brought on board (or both).  There’s a half-dozen ways Boeing and NASA could have addressed this:  on-the-job training, offering high wages/relocation bonuses/etc. to qualified transfers from within the company, offering high wages/relocation bonuses/etc. to qualified outside hires, headhunters, subcontracting to qualified providers, etc.  Instead, management repeatedly decided to keep plugging away with an inadequate workforce, which has resulted in crap like this (again from the IG report), on top of the bad welds:

Quote
For example, in September 2021, a Level II CAR noted that foreign object debris was identified inside the SLS Core. Stage 2 liquid hydrogen fuel tank.  DCMA found contamination of metal shavings, Teflon, and other debris... on the forward dome panels inside of the tank. Foreign object debris can damage hardware and potentially injure flight crew when entrapped within crewed flight articles...

For example, Boeing officials incorrectly approved hardware processing under unacceptable environmental conditions, accepted and presented damaged seals to NASA for inspection, and used outdated versions of work orders. DCMA also found that Boeing personnel made numerous administrative errors through changes to certified work order data without proper documentation and retention of historical information necessary to trace the changes...

My old man was a muscle car enthusiast in his spare time.  Did lots of different types of welding.  He kept his engines, cars, and garage in better condition than this for decades.  Heck, I visited salvage yards with my dad that kept better records than this.  I’ve visited a small factory for Ford Cobra replicas that was cleaner and better organized than this.

My maternal grandfather and his brother (my great uncle) were metalworkers by trade who did welding and pipe fitting for an Army munitions plant.  Worked around insane amounts of high-explosives for decades.  Never created incidents like this.

A lot of this isn’t even about an improperly trained workforce that doesn’t know how to weld.  It’s also just plain lazy and sloppy work, period.

Again, a few instances in a bad week or month are one thing.  But 70+ over more than a year is evidence of bad management that is either too stupid or too venal (or both) to know better.  Everyone in the management chain that repeatedly failed to take adequate action should be removed from the program and replaced by managers with proven competence and backbone.  And NASA leadership will still need to bring in some independent technical authority to make sure the build has not been compromised in ways that that DCMA would not detect.

Apologies for my harsh tone.  It’s directed at the EUS project, not the poster.

Likely because, like a lot of management buzzword stuff, it's one thing to require it and another thing to figure out what it actually means,

EVM is not a buzzword.  It’s just an objective system for tracking whether a project is on schedule and cost.  I taught it to myself back in the late 90s when I was keeping tabs on NASA programs at OMB (and back when NASA programs actually used it).  It was formulated in the 60s and formalized by DOD in 1967.  Folks outside the industry may not be familiar with it and even folks inside the industry who have not managed projects or done program accounting may not understand it.  But it’s the best tool for tracking program progress and finding where program management attention is needed that we’ve got.  There’s no excuse for an aerospace giant like Boeing to have lost the ability to track EVM for the past four years.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_value_management

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