You guys aren’t getting it. This isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.
For all those times when the passenger insists on complaining about the driver’s driving, the wheel comes off so the driver can hand the steering wheel over to the complaining passenger and tell them to show the driver how it’s done.
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… as seen in W.C. Fields’ 1940 movie, The Bank Dick:
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“Officials said both vehicles were delivered to the owners missing a bolt that attaches the steering wheel. Both of the incidents occurred “at low vehicle mileage,” according to the NHTSA.”
So the foreman says hey George where is that box of bolts? Oh I shoved back there out of the way so I wouldn’t trip over it. For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the war was lost. Details, details, details.
Are you doubting the missing-bolt aspect of the news theory?
Nope, not with nevadas illustration. Just worked in enough places to understand how a guy on the assembly line could thwart an engineer.
Back in the day, they had QA people on the production lines. They were the ones applying that stripe of paint across the bolt heads and nuts indicating they had been checked. Many years ago in the industry I am involved in, they moved away from dedicated QA people (cost cutting) and decided the people doing the work should also be the quality inspectors. Nice idea but fox watching the chicken coop deal as far as I’m concerned. The Lean folks prayed I would be struck by lightning for uttering such antiquated ideas…but we often had a rash of loose or missing hardware that would crop up from time to time.
I attended a demonstration of the Halo system. A wearable camera that is linked to the manufacturing online assembly visual work instructions. It’s a heads up display that allows the operator to view assembly information overlaid on the actual view of the product no matter the orientation. It displays instructions and points to next assembly step. It’s tied into the tools as well so it can see if you actually installed the bolt and if it was torqued to the proper value. It would not proceed until the required steps were completed properly. Still years away from most production facilities but the concept is functional…
The organization I worked in still does and probably always will. When you build onesies and have no chance for repairs, they have to be right. I appreciated having QA look over my shoulder to ask questions and ensure that we did things correctly. Our mechanics did the torque striping, but QA was always there to look for the stripes. They and the team lead are responsible for following the work order exactly or redlining in any variations that take place.
We went through a period of what was called shared leadership. In essence any supervisor or manager could be deep sixed and called on the carpet by hourly staff. Total chaos.