Do You Know the Term Quality Escape? It Is a Sign of MBA Efficiency Talk
January 12, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I am not too keen on leaving my underground computer facility. Given the choice of a flight on a commercial airline and doing a Zoom, fire up the Zoom. It works reasonably well. Plus, I don’t have to worry about screwed up flight controls, air craft maintenance completed in a country known for contraband, and pilots trained on flawed or incomplete instructional materials. Why am I nervous? As a Million Mile traveler on a major US airline, I have survived a guy dying in the seat next to me, assorted “return to airport” delays, and personal time spent in a comfy seat as pilots tried to get the mechanics to give the okay for the passenger jet to take off. (Hey, it just landed. What’s up? Oh, right, nothing.)
Another example of a quality escape: Modern car, dead battery, parts falling off, and a flat tire. Too bad the driver cannot plug into the windmill. Thanks, MSFT Copilot Bing thing. Good enough because the auto is not failing at 14,000 feet.
I mention my thrilling life as a road warrior because I read “Boeing 737-9 Grounding: FAA Leaves No Room For “Quality Escapes.” In that “real” news report I spotted a phrase which was entirely new to me. Imagine. After more than 50 years of work in assorted engineering disciplines at companies ranging from old-line industrial giants like Halliburton to hippy zippy outfits in Silicon Valley, here was a word pair that baffled me:
Quality Escape
Well, quality escape means that a product was manufactured, certified, and deployed which was did not meet “standards”. In plain words, the door and components were not safe and, therefore, lacked quality. And escape? That means failure. An F, flop, or fizzle.
“FAA Opens Investigation into Boeing Quality Control after Alaska Airlines Incident” reports:
… the [FAA] agency has recovered key items sucked out of the plane. On Sunday, a Portland schoolteacher found a piece of the aircraft’s fuselage that had landed in his backyard and reached out to the agency. Two cell phones that were likely flung from the hole in the plane were also found in a yard and on the side of the road and turned over to investigators.
I worked on an airplane related project or two when I was younger. One of my team owned two light aircraft, one of which was acquired from an African airline and then certified for use in the US. I had a couple of friends who were jet pilots in the US government. I picked up some random information; namely, FAA inspections are a hassle. Required work is expensive. Stuff breaks all the time. When I was picking up airplane info, my impression was that the FAA enforced standards of quality. One of the pilots was a certified electrical engineer. He was not able to repair his electrical equipment due to FAA regulations. The fellow followed the rules because the FAA in that far off time did not practice “good enough” oversight in my opinion. Today? Well, no people fell out of the aircraft when the door came off and the pressure equalization took place. iPhones might survive a fall from 14,000 feet. Most humanoids? Nope. Shoes, however, do fare reasonably well.
Several questions:
- Exactly how can a commercial aircraft be certified and then shed a door in flight?
- Who is responsible for okaying the aircraft model in the first place?
- Didn’t some similar aircraft produce exciting and consequential results for the passengers, their families, pilots, and the manufacturer?
- Why call crappy design and engineering “quality escape”? Crappy is simpler, more to the point.
Yikes. But if it flies, it is good enough. Excellence has a different spin these days.
Stephen E Arnold, January 12, 2024
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