List times when accountants / business managers overrode engineering and caused problems.

[JimPghPA]

List times when accountants and others, without an engineering background and / or without mechanical aptitude made engineering decisions that caused big problems.

Quality usually has a cost, and accountants and business managers like to trim out every last fraction of a cent of cost, many times against the advice of the engineer(s) who properly designed the product. Sometimes these cost cuttings result in problems, sometimes huge problems or even loss of life, and or a companies reputation.

So, your mission should you accept it, is to add post to this thread telling about times when the accountants and busines managers leaned out the money feeding a project to the extent that things went bad or very bad.

As usual, should you or any member of this forum violate the ban on S. R. or P. this thread will self destruct in 15 seconds.

 

[ctechbob]

GM 8 speed transmission.

Originally designed for a carbon/fiber torque converter clutch, shipped with a paper-based clutch to save $2 per unit.

Result was millions and millions of dollars in warranty claims and lawsuits.

Wasn't the only problem with the unit, the fluid was not changed for the paper based friction materials and caused its share of issues as well.

 

[JavierH19]

A plant manager for a major food producing company I work with to repair machinery for blames those above the accountants for their budget cuts that don't let them repair machinery quickly. From what i've learned through him accountants don't really do that from what i've been told but are the ones that relay changes to them. It's usually the cfo usually talks with the president above him who talks with the ceo on what to do then the cfo tells the accountant usually the chief accountant to talk to other departments and discuss how they can achieve what the cfo, pres, ceo wants. The accountants are more of the messengers. They aren't allowed to directly make decisions on their own but get blamed for it while the cfo, president, and ceo have their hands clean but they are the ones that actually push for cost cutting. Those high position executives have a compensation package structure usually set by the board which depends on company performance paid out in tranches while the accountants are just paid by the hour like the engineers with maybe a bonus. No real incentive to push cost cutting.

 

[JimPghPA]

The Remington series 700 triger fiasco is a prime example. The triger was originally designed safe and proper by engineer Mike Walker, but cost cutting measures caused an unsafe cheaper triger system to go into production and it caused deaths and destroyed Remington.

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In a totally different field, a friend of mine worked for a major telecommunications equipment company many years ago. The executives decided to use the cheaper versions of a microprocessor that had a lower maximum clock speed rating in their equiptment that was designed to use the more expensive version of the same microprocessor that had the higher rated clock speed. Basicly over-clocking the microprocessor. The engineers ( including my friend ) warned them that it would not be reliable. They produced it anyway. It cost them a lot to replace all the units that failed.

 

[wings&wheels]

If the "accountants" caused problems, then the Product Managers, BU Leadership or even Sales were not up to their task....

In 30+ years of corporate leadership life in tech, manufacturing and defense in both multinats and start-ups, I have never seen any accountant or finance teams down to the level of making actual technical decisions.

Now, at the risk of gross oversimplification, here we go. Finance may establish project budgets, P & L targets, etc. that BUs or product lines will have to manage to, but then the onus is on the product teams the deliver within those guidelines. At the end of the day, the business has to be profitable, so it is up to the product teams, which include much more than Engineering, to deliver within those guidelines or communicate up why they cannot. Effective teams do that.

I will say, especially in tech, I have seen more problems arise from engineering insisting on giving the customers what they should have (if only they were as smart as the engineers) as opposed to what the customers want and will actually buy.

 

[TnT_M]

I think this topic is a wide brush and somewhat sterotypical. In 30 years of working manufacturing, what I have come to learn is there are 3 legs to the stool and it is a balance. The legs are usually some variety of cost, quality and time. You have to balance all 3 but will never fully achieve all 3. This is called compramising, and is required in business.

 

[JimPghPA]

Perhaps I should have said penny counters, instead of accountants.

 

[JavierH19]

If the "accountants" caused problems, then the Product Managers, BU Leadership or even Sales were not up to their task....

In 30+ years of corporate leadership life in tech, manufacturing and defense in both multinats and start-ups, I have never seen any accountant or finance teams down to the level of making actual technical decisions.

Now, at the risk of gross oversimplification, here we go. Finance may establish project budgets, P & L targets, etc. that BUs or product lines will have to manage to, but then the onus is on the product teams the deliver within those guidelines. At the end of the day, the business has to be profitable, so it is up to the product teams, which include much more than Engineering, to deliver within those guidelines or communicate up why they cannot. Effective teams do that.

I will say, especially in tech, I have seen more problems arise from engineering insisting on giving the customers what they should have (if only they were as smart as the engineers) as opposed to what the customers want and will buy.

Yes this is what people who aren't in these complexly structured businesses don't understand. Accountants get blamed for everything but I've never seen them do anything. It's usually some finance related executive pushing for tighter budgets after seeing the financial statements the accountants created to prop up their margins and free cash flows so their reports look better so they can get paid their big compensation structure traunch.

 

[fdcg27]

What if every product and service we either purchase or use were offered at the highest possible quality level without regard to cost?
What could we afford to buy or to use?
What I'm trying to say is that while there has to be a reasonable level of quality in what's offered there also must be some constraint on cost.
Finding the right balance is what good management does and not all management is any good.
I'll also note that cheaping out often ends up costing a company more than it would have cost them simply to have done things right in the first place.

 

[loneryder]

GM 8 speed transmission.

Originally designed for a carbon/fiber torque converter clutch, shipped with a paper-based clutch to save $2 per unit.

Result was millions and millions of dollars in warranty claims and lawsuits.

Wasn't the only problem with the unit, the fluid was not changed for the paper based friction materials and caused its share of issues as well.

The bean counters (MBAs) can't or don't think about any consequences of their decisions. It's a get it off my desk move.

 

[Snagglefoot]

Aboard the “ Enola Gay”. What’s this switch for?

 

[JeffKeryk]

A big roadblock to success is, "making the date". For many years, American car companies would not stop the production line. "We ain't got time to build it right but we got time to fix it later." Deming/Toyota changed history.

 

[AZjeff]

If you weren't at the table involved in the decision process it's just a guess/rant. Exceptions would be published examples.

 

[I<3oil]

Boeing

 

[PontiacHO]

Titanic

 

[ATex7239]

If engineers were the sole decision makers on projects every project would be way over engineered, way over budget, and way over due. I know people like to blame finance (eg, bean counters) for every problem or poor outcome but the reality is money and time are finite. I doubt any one of us doesn’t set a budget when doing projects or general life stuff trying to strike a balance between what is required and what is affordable. Imagine if you told your spouse to redecorate a room or shop without any financial guard rails or if you started a project car build or home improvement project without any regard for costs, time to completion, desired outcome.

 

[Sequoiasoon]

My company was installing some new equipment and building an area for flammable filling. The EHS/Safety director was an active firefighter, hazmat and on some respective boards. He advised them that they needed to upgrade some systems before installing because the laws were changing for certifications. That was denied as it was already over budget. His words to them "so you have just enough money to do it wrong". Sure enough when project was done and final approvals needed from town it was denied. They had to replace and update those systems at more than 2x the original cost plus all the labor to rip out the brand new stuff and reinstall.

 

[goblin]

I disagree on the Titanic. It was built right. The captain's decisions were the culprit.

On topic: The Challenger disaster.

 

[The_Jeff]

Hang an antenna and watch HDTV over-the-air.

It won't look as good as it did ten years ago. I have a little over-the-air PVR that records the ATSC transport stream directly to a USB device, and have airchecks from back then.... for example, the last "Letterman" in 2015.

There are 18 Mbps to play with in the signal, but the "main" channel only gets about 4.5. The subchannels, of which there are many, take about 2 each.

Bean counters want to pack as many channels in as they can. Engineers, say, noooooo, it will look bad. Bean counter says, ok, try me. Bean counter says, nah, not that bad, make it so. Goes into corner office and counts beans.

Go ahead and get close to your screen. Look at all the compression artifacts. Quality will be on par with YouTube.

 

[Saturnguy]

Hyatt Regency disaster

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyatt_Regency_walkway_collapse