[adingus]

Harold Dodge said "You can't inspect quality into a system". The father of quality assurance, Edward Deming, understood this when he taught quality control to companies in post war Japan. The US learned these lessons during WWII and promptly forgot them. Increasing inspections doesn't prevent screw ups, it only catches them. You're still wasting money and time on mistakes, some of which will still go undetected by inspection. Just like you can't unit test quality into a crappy dev team. Quality is a cultural value that's built into the system and Boeings culture seems to be garbage.

[stcredzero]

My Psychology of Business 101 professor told this anecdote in the 80's:

IBM decided to use a Japanese subcontractor to make chips for the first time. Since they didn't know what to expect, they put a clause in the contract stipulating "3 defects per 100,000." When they got the shipment, they also received a package with a letter: "We do not understand American business practices. Enclosed are your 3 defects."

Quality is a cultural value that's built into the system and Boeings culture seems to be garbage.

This is exactly what I thought of, when I head they were moving manufacturing to South Carolina. (I lived there while in grad school.)

[Zigurd]

That's true for mass manufacturing where statistical quality control is applicable. If you are building 30 737s a month, or 5 777s, 100% inspection, which would be abhorrent at the iPhone factory, can be a rational approach. SQA is applicable to the fasteners, less so the whole airframe.

[D13Fd]

I laughed when I saw the headline. Inspections could help catch some issues but it sounds like the problems run so much deeper than that.

[sebazzz]

So, how do you change culture then? Like a dev team adopting quality?