Confoundedness (Poll 7)

Poll completion: 08/02/09

--- original post ---

It's time for another poll. Gosh, the last one was September. This shows that I believed in the process progression as we were told by many statements and was not one of the naysayers.

Boeing seems to be exhibiting confoundedness. So people ought not beat on them; it would be like an ER doctor berating a patient even though whatever is ailing the patient was the result of the person's own choice. No, we need to understand the causes and fix things up.

In short, was Boeing biting off more than one can chew, hoping that subcontractors could magically handle what might be intractable problems, dissing their own employees to run after new partners (the old middle-aged syndrome), and much more?

Much of this has been discussed here, will continue to be discussed here, and can serve as a very interesting lesson of what was wrought with the ending of the 20th century. That is, the 21st century will belong to the workers not to the fat cats (in engineering, it's the negative influences coming out of GE and Welch's legacy that got in the way).

Yes, that comment is a tie back into the economic side of engineering.

Why Boeing allowed themselves to maximize the confounding of factors is anyone's guess. Relaxing along all decision axes is very troublesome in safe environments. To do so when risk is not entirely understood (yes, you guys - Jim M, Scott C, et al - there were people arguing way back about not going whole hog (by what, was the necessity?) after a dream) can have very undesirable consequences.

Lessons learned will abound.

Disclaimer:
Usual poll etiquette assumed; polls are oriented toward information and not mis / dis-information.
- A casual user cannot double vote on any poll. But, there is no guard against intentional duplicate votes by those who know how.
- There is no consistency checking between polls.
- There is no meta-information about who votes or why.
- There is no current correlation between the polls, however the 'role' poll allows some indication of interest.

Remarks:

12/31/2013 -- A popular post in both 2012 and 2013. Ah, how many ways to we confound things? Do you not think that queuing up packages, at the last moment, for deliver somehow would not work (as in, expectations being way out of whack?)?

08/13/2011 -- Added completion; see top of post.

01/19/2011 -- Update1 and Update2. The focus now will be mostly the idiots of economics/finance.

09/09/09 -- We'll need to look at UUUN, as a framework.

09/02/2009 -- Let's face it, folks, undecidability needs to be discussed and adopted in any complex situational setting, especially if computers are involved. Only hubris pushes us to make loud exclamations about what we're going to do in the future.

07/23/2009 -- There have been several critical articles. Here are a couple, from down under, that illustrate the mood swing.

• Is the 787 Dreamliner fiasco more about toxic corporate cultures than a flawed design?
• The 787 Calamity: Lies and evasions continue

Gosh, wonder if Boeing would like to take back 07/08/07 and start over. Yet, there are five issues ought to be addressed. Remember, the underdetermined state is more common than we would like to admit.
Modified: 12/31/2013