| Tom Joad: But
where does it stop? Who can
we shoot? I don’t aim to starve to death before I shoot the man that’s starving me. Muley Graves : It ain’t nobody. It’s a company. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath. |
Dominic Vautier
6/2012
CAD/CAM
stands for computer aided design computer aided manufacturing. Notice there is a big slash between the two because they are in
different worlds altogether. I
lived in both worlds and began to realize just how different they were.
I spent a year in these worlds and did a lot of 3D programming
but nobody was enthusiastic about anything I did. So I left WIRS, or rather I was transfered out of it.
Actually the boss got in front of the
entire CAD/CAM development project which consisted of about 60 people. He said “I have some bad news and
some worse news: first of all the bad news—the challenger exploded, and the worse news is this project has just been cancelled.
You will all be reassigned." The project was going nowhere anyway.
They sent me to a development project in weights.
Weights at Boeing is one of the four
“technology” disciplines. When
an airplane is designed it has to have a certain empty weight (no fuel).
That’s in each contract and if the target weight is not met
then the company pays. In
order to do this the weight of each part that goes on that plane is
added up to get a total
weight. It's not quite that simple
because adjustments
are made for other factors.
The center of mass is calculated for each plane before it takes off, so the pilots can get off the ground without difficulty. The rotation point is determined by the speed and weight. It is when the plane leaves the ground, and there is always a moment where the wings take over and you get that funny feeling. If weight is not correct then the plane can dip one way or do other unexpected things.
I worked on several new programs because the old system was being retired. I loved the job and the manager was a woman whom I got along with very well. I also took up challenges that she offered to me sometimes just for fun. The group gave me lots of awards and recognition. Working in weights was quite enjoyable.
But as was the nature of life the project ended so I
had to move on. I was first attracted to a job back in my old hunting ground in
customer support called APS 2.0 which was a replacement for
APS 1.5 ( it never did). This out-of control thing was supposed to provide engineering manuals
for new airplanes. When
Boeing delivers a new plane, along with the plane comes a ton of manuals, which
include part replacement lists, operating instructions, engineering
specifications, wiring manuals, and much more stuff. So APS 2.0 was going to be better than the old system, or at
least that was the plan.
In APS 2.0, I was assigned to
work on “effectivities” which
was a word coined to describe what planes the part was used on or "effecrive"
on. Just about every group I worked with used
effectivity, but in
slightly different ways. It was a holdover from WW II plane
development and manufacture. At that time, airplanes had to be built fast and many parts were
late, or misplaced or superseded by new parts, and so the designers and
manufacturing engineers came up with a name that was to be applied to
one or several planes. It was used in slightly different ways depending on the job.
Engineers used it to identify parts common to several airplanes,
whereas manufacturing engineers used it to refer to individual parts,
and customer service used it to identify replacement or superseded
parts. This method seemed to do the job. It could also identify
“traveler” parts, that is, parts that were assembled out of
sequence, and identified the plane or batch of planes the part was
"effective" on.
I designed my own Oracle
database to support my programming. I always was in the habit of doing so because it made perfect
sense to me. Meanwhile the
company hired a contract analyst from Oracle at an obscene salary who
was supposedly a data base expert. I don’t know where he came from but I think it was the moon and
he had no idea what he was
doing on earth. He lived in a strange
world of his own making where reality had vanished altogether and had
been replaced by fictional monsters. We had a real bad confrontation one day about his strange designs and I lost
the argument because the manager felt that they were paying Oracle so much money so
they had to use this guy's designs. Otherwise they would look bad. Right
then I left APS 2.0 determined that the project was doomed which it was. I got
another job immediately.
A short time later the APS 2.0 manager had a nervous breakdown.
Years later I ran into a good friend who had worked for me some time before. He was a data base analyst and said he was having an absolutely miserable time with this horrible system designed by total mad men. It was APS2.0.