I’ll say up front that I both am not an engineer, and I don’t have any defense or maritime industry experience.
Early in my career, I did, however, do some work in the hydraulics industry.
But I’m fascinated with all things mechanical and I pay attention to the state of various industries.
My take on the most likely cause of these problems...
1) Viewing engineers as interchangeable assets that can be hired/fired/moved at will rather than respecting the expertise that comes with experience. If you want to make machines that last, most of the problems were sorted out long ago. Sure, new technology may introduce new problems, but the knowledge of what solutions work and why other solutions fail seems to be lost on every generation. Part of it is the lack of good knowledge transfer, but a big part is that companies don’t value their staff so people either don’t stay or they’re fired and replaced.
2) Management by MBA. I think an MBA can be a real asset when it’s coupled with experience - especially industry experience. But too often, it’s assumed an MBA in itself turns an otherwise useless cog into a star manager. In my experience, too many MBAs have a lot of book smarts and are eager to implement the latest academically-generated buzzworks only to royally screw up an otherwise functioning company, department or product. Worse, they often seem to skate by, getting bonuses for “saving money” in the short term, then they jump ship or get promoted before the ramifications of their decisions have fully taken effect. It only takes a couple of these “wiz kidz” to leave a trail of destruction through a formerly successful company.
I’m betting if the full history of these product failures were investigated, you’d find one or both of the above. In fact, I’d guess that there were numerous warnings about these very failures potentially happening that were ignored/suppressed/overruled because they were raised by people too far down the chain to have their opinions matter.
Good observations.
All true.
Spot on.
...or, like me, with 24 years experience, they are laid off without even a chance to train a replacement. That was a disaster for my former company. They hired two young ladies to do my job. They both quit within a month, saying that they hadn't realized they would have to work so hard.
As for me, a major relief. I hadn't realized, until I had a chance to relax and decompress, how stressed I had been from doing the work of 2.5 people.
Good points.
I did some shipyard time on a new construction once. We had a lot of trouble with one large very expensive labyrinth gas compressor. The compressors were shipped from Switzerland in a well sealed up containment. Yard engineers opened one up out of curiosity. Compressor sat there opened for a long time and was exposed to a daily bath of drifting sand blast grit. Took months of changing filters daily to get most of it all out.
As a retired engineer, I think you nailed it. I would also add that replacing experienced engineers with foreign immigrants at a lower salary may be a factor.