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Subject: A400M - 2 years late - $1 billion over budget
Softwar    9/17/2008 4:43:12 PM
The head of European aerospace firm EADS has written to the seven main countries that have ordered its Airbus A400M military airlifter to ask them not to make it pay fines for delays, the Financial Times Deutschland reported on Tuesday. Louis Gallois did not detail any concrete figures for further cost increases or time delays in the letter, which was a precursor to negotiations with customers in the coming weeks, the paper said. But the FTD added that recent speculation that costs for the A400M programme would rise by up to 700 million euros ($981 million) was too low, citing industry information. The paper quoted an insider as saying deliveries of the A400M could be two years later than originally scheduled.
 
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flamingknives       9/17/2008 5:03:52 PM
You've got to wonder what is going on with many large aerospace/defence companies. Nothing is on time or to budget, with few and rare exceptions.

It's hardly a European disease, as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman et. al. all have their tales of late/poor quality/over budget programmes.

Why?
 
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Softwar       9/19/2008 9:23:37 AM
In order to make the sale - contractors frequently produce low ball cost figures and slim schedules.  After the program is up - then they start the blame game - design changes - user requests - new features.  It works for warships, aircraft and .... even homes.
 
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FJV    Not wanting to be realistic   9/19/2008 5:29:26 PM
Often the same mistakes are getting made over and over again. The most common cause is often the refusal to be realistic. The persons involved don't want their fantasies disturbed or don't want to get fired for disturbing the fantasies of those higher up.
 
1- Not budgetting for manufacturing tools and jigs. Also not planning for it.
2- Not planning realistically for time, planning 2 weeks from right now to produce something, when you know that the parts
    and materials you need to order will take 2 weeks to arrive leaving no time for production and assembly.
3- Not providing information or giving the go-ahead at the right time. You have a month to order parts that will take 2 weeks to
    arrive, but you get the exact specs and number of the parts you need to order just a week in advance.
4- Skipping vital steps in the desing process to save on time. This includes:
     - Going ahead with designing while the specifications are incomplete, this will cause the engineer having to design the same part
       several times instead of just once.
     - Not having the design drawings checked for faults. This will cause those faults to show up during production/assembly.
     - Not having a chat with the guy that actually has to produce the design.
5- Using conflicting management philosophies.
    You can have small stocks and order stuff just in time, however that means that everything that is ordered has to be on time     and without flaws, because you don't have time to send the faulty part back and wait for a good one to arrive. This means that
    for some crucial parts you cannot always use the cheapest suppliers.
6- Not looking at the whole process when evaluating succes and failure, which causes blame to be shifted. For instance:
    When a parts buyer skimps 10 cents on a bearing by switching supplier and the new supplier sends a faulty bearing, the people in
    the workshop are forced to work overtime to correct this. At the end of the year that buyer will say "I have saved $100,000 on    
    parts"  and the workshop gets blamed for taking too much time to assemble parts and running over budget.
7- There are 3 things Good, Fast and Cheap. You can only choose 2 of those, yet managers never choose instead wanting all 3.
    This is basically rolling the dice to see which 2 you will get. Getting Fast, Cheap and Faulty, when you really needed Fast and
    Good, but more expensive.
8- Not being able to choose between the lesser of 2 evils. This will postpone decisions that will be made anyway and as such time is
    wasted. Instead some people will harp on and on about how unfair it is and never decide making things worse.
9- Creating unneeded overhead, by having the managing staff driving expensive luxury cars having luxury offices in expensive
    locations making expensive commercials about how good they are having expensive company parties.
    One of the competitors of the company I work for have lavish offices and better company parties, however they charge their
    customers more and pay their employees less. (someone has to pay for all that "show bizz" after all)

Etc, etc, etc,etc.....
 

 
 
 
 
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