Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Rectifying Failure

"It underscores China's failure to police the blatant market in counterfeit parts -- a failure China should rectify." [More]
Oh, they're rectifying failure, alright. Nothing succeeds like supremacy.


What really gets me is, in a different life I spent over 16 years doing regulatory compliance policies and procedures, proposals, system manuals, etc., for a defense contractor--everything from soup to nuts. Here's the relevant section from my resume:
Manager, Systems and Procedures, Hughes Defense Communications 1981 – 1997 Torrance, CA: Originally Magnavox Advanced Product and Systems, the company developed and manufactured satellite navigation and communication products in defense contracting and commercial business areas. • Promoted from Material/Production Control Procedures Analyst in 1987. • Coordinated command media for administrative, engineering, production and quality departments in defense contracting and commercial business segments in compliance with OSHA, FAR, CAS and other applicable regulatory requirements. • Managed organizational documentation, forms design/control. • Performed key role in audits and corrective action/quality improvement cross-functional activities. • Credited with significant responsibility for attainment of ISO 9001 registration. • Developed online media distribution system , reducing costs by 75%. • Supported numerous successful proposal efforts.
I bring this up to establish that while I am offering an opinion based on a media report, it is an opinion formed by no small amount of goal-attaining experience in a heavily regulated and audited supply chain environment. Those aren't mere meaningless words and acronyms in the above list. I just don't see how this could happen on such a scale without a directed blind eye and outright collusion on "our" side.

Should we believe everyone in our leadership has been taken by surprise on this?  Or are there more serious failures that we need to rectify?

[Via Jess]

2 comments:

Robert Fowler said...

I want to know how the Chinese get these parts through security and into the stock of the manufacturer? These parts are supposed to go direct from manufacturer to the military end users. There should be no way to get this stuff into the system without help from on high. They need to find out how high. This sounds like it could bring some very serious charges, not the least treason.

Carl-Bear said...

I used to be involved in procurement and QA in the military. Granted my experience is old, but this could slide by the military side for a while assuming deliberate fraud in the supplier paperwork.

I say deliberate, because I also did QA work in the civilian sector (including a mil contractor for the Navy), and their testing would have caught these issues. Heck, I worked at a sonar transducer manufacturer who ran a section just to do alloy analysis on bronze transducer housings (due to Chinese supplier probs), and 100% dimension testing on on piezo elements. I did 100% electronic screening and programming on out-of-house-manufactured circuit boards, too.

Yeah, deliberate fraud. Fake papers are cheaper than testing.