I was in engineering for thirty years. I did failure analysis for Air Force, Navy and Army materials. I know how complicated things can get. Sometimes, the cause of the problem is something the government insisted on to prevent failures. Things like overly complicated, expensive tests, processes, procedures, documentation, etc. Part of the problem that caused the door to blow off the Alaska Airlines Boeing was both companies involved went out of their way to avoid using the government-imposed rework process as it was not only complicated but caused significant delays. For example, the inspector you need to sign off will be there on Friday, a week away. The material sits in a jig that could be used six times over by that time. But it sits idle and backs up work causing weeks of delays and changes.
The whole aircraft parts process probably needs a significant overhaul from top to bottom with an eye for getting rid of decades of bad processes and unworkable procedures. But just try to get a government entity to change anything. They’re terrified that if they agree to something and bad things result, they’ll be blamed. The company I worked for had an employee in the FAA office in DC. He’d start getting something signed off on a Monday. By Thursday people who had already signed it were looking to see if it was signed off. If not, they’d remove their signature in case something involving that change caused an accident over the weekend and they had their name on something related that wasn’t approve all the way, to spread the blame. I hated working with the government on anything.
I worked in government aviation during the 1960’s.
The only component I inspected thoroughly was manufactured by a British company…Martin Baker.