6 Comments

Regarding the manufacturing problem in America, I fix mistakes on tires before the rubber is cured for a living. For a company you’ve heard of. Been in that role for 10 years. Been with the company for 12. The amount of mistakes I see, while still well under 10% of units is a lot higher than it was several years ago. You’ve got people making tires that wouldn’t have made it through their 6 month probation period 10 years ago.

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I work QA for a housing panels mill, and this is very reminiscent of what I'm seeing.

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Just plain scary because this is resonating from the simplest tasks to the most difficult.

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A lot of it would be prevented by taking 5-30 seconds to double check things at critical points. And a little critical thinking.

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And the basic reality that it takes longer than management would like to be qualified. Training for my job is 8 weeks. That’s where you’ve got the technique down and can be reasonably trusted to catch a mistake if you make one. To really actually know what you are doing running the post? Add a year to that 8 week training period. A year where you get to pull people aside at shift change to ask questions. A year where you get to spend a good chunk of the shift looking at references. That’s my job and two more of the 6 production jobs on the floor in the shop I work in. Can’t slow things down by doing that though. They want people to go from crawl to run and skip walk. Plenty of fault to go around I guess.

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So, weaponry of Space... cannot agree more. At NPS MORS 2024, I spent the better part of a day talking to a retired USAF O-6 pilot, now working for SPACECOM. It's gonna get real ugly for humanity. Concur with stop the madness.

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