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#1 2024-01-18 12:11:35
- tahanson43206
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- Registered: 2018-04-27
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Quality Control - Space Flight - Any Complex Undertaking
This topic was inspired by an observation of GW Johnson.
For SpaceNut ... we had NO topics that included the word "quality" in the title.
This topic is available for forum members who might wish to consider how people and machines can work together to increase reliability of complex undertakings.
The topic is NOT limited to spaceflight, but it is inspired by the difficulty of achieving reliable space flight.
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#2 2024-01-18 12:12:03
- tahanson43206
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- Registered: 2018-04-27
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Re: Quality Control - Space Flight - Any Complex Undertaking
Quoting from the GW Johnson topic:
I see news reports that SpaceX delayed the private launch of Dragon to ISS for Axiom Space. They were correcting issues with parachute rigging and with the connection of Dragon to Falcon-9.
Those are fundamentally quality control issues that they are addressing. I find that worrisome. In my experience, the bigger an outfit gets, the more likely to occur is that kind of trouble. Boeing is the current egregious example of that effect.
GW
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#3 2024-01-18 12:17:51
- tahanson43206
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- Registered: 2018-04-27
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Re: Quality Control - Space Flight - Any Complex Undertaking
The SpaceX company is not unionized, so it is inappropriate to blame labor unions for quality issues.
Factors that can reduce reliability in a non-unionized work force include fatigue, time compression, communication failures and possibly inadequate training.
It occurs to me that automated systems are coming along at a respectable pace.... It might be appropriate to consider using automation to perform inspections of human work as the work is done, and after the work is completed.
This concept is an alternative to using robots/automated-systems to do the work in the first place.
By using automated inspectors, companies/organizations can keep the human work force on it's toes, while keeping that work force engaged with delivery of whatever complex system is in work.
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