They bring to light long-term problems, flaws, critics who warned about the problems, etc. But those things are not correlated with the outcome.
Remember that correlation requires both if A then B and if not A then not B. In this case, every enterprise of the scale and complexity of Boeing has problems, critics, flaws, etc. - there is no 'not A' condition, there is no correlation.
Airbus has those issues too - they are in the 'A' state - but they didn't lose a door plug. What we're seeing is that when something goes wrong, a sufficiently well-examined enterprise (even sports teams) will have someone to say 'I told you so'.
Their analysis may be no more worthwhile than a stopped clock. And even to the extent flaws are true, that's not at all conclusive. Anyone who has had to manage anything of a certain scale - not even a very large scale - knows that such flaws are inevitable; there is not enough time, labor, or money in the world to fix them all (and imagine doing that on the scale of commercial airliners!). The art to expert, technological management is to deliver results despite the flaws, to know how to make sausage.
The question is not, why was Boeing in the 'A' state; that's inescapable. The question is, why did Boeing management fail to do their job, which is to deliver results while in the A state? If it was an IT business, I might have some perspective. Making airplanes - I have no clue how the sausage is made. We need an industry expert.
(I'll also add that one failed door plug on one plane, out of all the planes Boeing flies, is questionable data for this analysis. It's not ok, it's a failure, but it may not be data. I'd guess that more planes will be struck by lightning this year.)
Comments
Beware a major bias in these Boeing analyses:
They bring to light long-term problems, flaws, critics who warned about the problems, etc. But those things are not correlated with the outcome.
Remember that correlation requires both if A then B and if not A then not B. In this case, every enterprise of the scale and complexity of Boeing has problems, critics, flaws, etc. - there is no 'not A' condition, there is no correlation.
Airbus has those issues too - they are in the 'A' state - but they didn't lose a door plug. What we're seeing is that when something goes wrong, a sufficiently well-examined enterprise (even sports teams) will have someone to say 'I told you so'.
Their analysis may be no more worthwhile than a stopped clock. And even to the extent flaws are true, that's not at all conclusive. Anyone who has had to manage anything of a certain scale - not even a very large scale - knows that such flaws are inevitable; there is not enough time, labor, or money in the world to fix them all (and imagine doing that on the scale of commercial airliners!). The art to expert, technological management is to deliver results despite the flaws, to know how to make sausage.
The question is not, why was Boeing in the 'A' state; that's inescapable. The question is, why did Boeing management fail to do their job, which is to deliver results while in the A state? If it was an IT business, I might have some perspective. Making airplanes - I have no clue how the sausage is made. We need an industry expert.
(I'll also add that one failed door plug on one plane, out of all the planes Boeing flies, is questionable data for this analysis. It's not ok, it's a failure, but it may not be data. I'd guess that more planes will be struck by lightning this year.)