Back in 1985 when I sneaked out of McDonnell Douglas for a half day to have a secret interview with Ray Crawley at Menasco in Burbank, I was hoping that I could start a new adventure in a new country.
It didn't happen.
What I had noticed at McDonnell Douglas was the American management style, which some may say is detached and impersonal, yet, I saw it as a great improvement over the style characterized by British companies like Gullicks, Alcan and APPH.
In 1988 when I arrived off the boat in Canada to work at Dowty, it was a bit of a shock to find that Dowty was in fact run like a British company and that the middle and upper management was dominated by immigrants from the old country.
What am I going on about? - well, Dowty was like working at a British company in a foreign country, the old feeling of a class system was very much evident and this would always magnify the experience of being a peon in the system.
The ladder of success seemed to be more about plotting, secret handshakes, being one of the "mates" and maintaining the royalty driven class system.
I'm not naive, I'm sure the same practices went on at all companies, regardless, however, what I saw at McDonnell Douglas at Long Beach and perceived at Menasco in Burbank was very different and after six months at Menasco in Oakville it was evident that the place was run like an American company.
Well, almost.
It was a hybrid, with some British born middle managers attempting to enforce a class system, yet the Colt Industries upper management style made the experience more like the McDonnell Douglas one, something that was actually very refreshing.
It felt to me that this was what an engineering company should be like, that visits to the test department, shop floor and assembly, salvage areas and general interaction with the manufacturing process were encouraged. It was helped somewhat by Menasco not being a union bound company and that occasionally, management joined in and rolled up their sleeves to solve problems.
And what was especially wholesome about Menasco was how rapid management could be when it came to giving you a good old fashioned bollocking for doing something wrong or stupid, something that must be respected, especially when, after the reprimand, no grudges would be held, the air would be cleared and things would move on.
Refreshing.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Incoming
I had been dropped in the thick of it all at Menasco and I would liken myself to one of those music hall acts where the performer has to keep a series of plates spinning on poles, usually running around like a madman to keep them all upright.
MRB was a big daily job, in addition to the other things like report generation, proposals and general troubleshooting, MRB was the backbone of the work at the Menasco stress office and a lot of it was Boeing MRB work and of course, Menasco did a lot of work for Boeing.
In that first year at Menasco my attitudes to salvage and repair work changed dramatically, at first I felt that the work was beneath me, however, after a few months of working with the Boeing methods and the MRB guys at Menasco, I felt that MRB was by far the most interesting aspect of being a stress analyst.
In addition, as a job shopper, I could see that it was an endless gig.
I'll talk about differences in management style in a future post, but the one thing that was obvious about the structural department at Menasco was that no one was afraid of rolling up their sleeves to get MRB work approved and moved through the system. There was also no fear, no matter what the priority, about scrapping something that could not be salvaged for either structural or aesthetic reasons.
Larry Abram and myself would sit down and blitz through the salvage reports, his boss, a larger than life Greek guy called Gerry Kouverianos, would also roll up his sleeves when the waiting pile of MRB became too high, it was a simple thing, the engine of the business was production and warranty work which coupled with aircraft safety meant that we all took the job very seriously.
The only lighter side to all of it would be the liaison between the stress office and the chief representative of the MRB department, Nick Chronopoulous (another Greek) who would tend to "hover" about the office when critical salvages were required for approval. Nick would constantly roll an elastic band between his index fingers as he invaded our space,occasionally beads of sweat would appear on his brow when he suspected we would be scrapping something that "could not be scrapped" and he would, every now and then, cross the line and offer important stress analysis advice to exactly the wrong person.
Larry.
At those delicate and highly explosive moments (I would call them the "light blue touch paper" moments) it was best for the rest of us to scamper away and retire to the safety of a nearby bunker and watch and giggle as the firework display progressed...
MRB was a big daily job, in addition to the other things like report generation, proposals and general troubleshooting, MRB was the backbone of the work at the Menasco stress office and a lot of it was Boeing MRB work and of course, Menasco did a lot of work for Boeing.
In that first year at Menasco my attitudes to salvage and repair work changed dramatically, at first I felt that the work was beneath me, however, after a few months of working with the Boeing methods and the MRB guys at Menasco, I felt that MRB was by far the most interesting aspect of being a stress analyst.
In addition, as a job shopper, I could see that it was an endless gig.
I'll talk about differences in management style in a future post, but the one thing that was obvious about the structural department at Menasco was that no one was afraid of rolling up their sleeves to get MRB work approved and moved through the system. There was also no fear, no matter what the priority, about scrapping something that could not be salvaged for either structural or aesthetic reasons.
Larry Abram and myself would sit down and blitz through the salvage reports, his boss, a larger than life Greek guy called Gerry Kouverianos, would also roll up his sleeves when the waiting pile of MRB became too high, it was a simple thing, the engine of the business was production and warranty work which coupled with aircraft safety meant that we all took the job very seriously.
The only lighter side to all of it would be the liaison between the stress office and the chief representative of the MRB department, Nick Chronopoulous (another Greek) who would tend to "hover" about the office when critical salvages were required for approval. Nick would constantly roll an elastic band between his index fingers as he invaded our space,occasionally beads of sweat would appear on his brow when he suspected we would be scrapping something that "could not be scrapped" and he would, every now and then, cross the line and offer important stress analysis advice to exactly the wrong person.
Larry.
At those delicate and highly explosive moments (I would call them the "light blue touch paper" moments) it was best for the rest of us to scamper away and retire to the safety of a nearby bunker and watch and giggle as the firework display progressed...
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Industrial Secrecy
The story that I heard about the mysterious similarity between the programs at both Menasco and Dowty was a simple one really and it was to do with personnel moving from one place to another, I know who it was, but as this is a blog, on the world wide web, I will keep the name to myself, mainly because some will argue the toss about which came first.
The chicken, or the egg.
The majority of the programs I am speaking about originated at Menasco, which of course, does not mean that the programs or the code originated or was proprietary to Menasco. It just means that a bunch of programming code that ended up at Dowty had been taken there by a former Menasco employee.
This was nothing new as the practice was rife in the industry, as I mentioned, McDonnell Douglas was fairly open about methods with their trusted customers, they also shared the same with their subcontractors. As multiple subcontractors may have been in competition with each other, it was the subcontractors, like Heroux, Dowty and Menasco, who started coveting each others methods.
It became quite common for employees who were leaving for the competition or had been given their marching orders to be escorted from buildings by the security officers, in later years, access to the computer systems would be removed before the unfortunate employee even knew.
I think the atmosphere of mistrust developed from those senior men that came before all of us, at the end of the day, the coveting of the likes of a lug analysis based on theories from Melcon and Hoblit developed thirty years earlier could hardly have been an excuse to vilify anyone.
Yet, at some point in the future, an event would happen based on the origins of these programs that would amaze and astonish me.
Something that would affect more than my own destiny.
The chicken, or the egg.
The majority of the programs I am speaking about originated at Menasco, which of course, does not mean that the programs or the code originated or was proprietary to Menasco. It just means that a bunch of programming code that ended up at Dowty had been taken there by a former Menasco employee.
This was nothing new as the practice was rife in the industry, as I mentioned, McDonnell Douglas was fairly open about methods with their trusted customers, they also shared the same with their subcontractors. As multiple subcontractors may have been in competition with each other, it was the subcontractors, like Heroux, Dowty and Menasco, who started coveting each others methods.
It became quite common for employees who were leaving for the competition or had been given their marching orders to be escorted from buildings by the security officers, in later years, access to the computer systems would be removed before the unfortunate employee even knew.
I think the atmosphere of mistrust developed from those senior men that came before all of us, at the end of the day, the coveting of the likes of a lug analysis based on theories from Melcon and Hoblit developed thirty years earlier could hardly have been an excuse to vilify anyone.
Yet, at some point in the future, an event would happen based on the origins of these programs that would amaze and astonish me.
Something that would affect more than my own destiny.
Parallel Universe
The transition from Dowty to Menasco was easy, it was essentially the same company as far as my limited world of stress analysis was concerned.
Even the programs had the same names...
The methods for creating text files were different, the procedure for running and executing the programs were different but the actual programs, well, the input format was the same and the output was predominantly the same.
Which struck me as odd.
In fact, Menasco had their own manual for their programs that felt vaguely familiar, it wasn't as organized or as updated as the Dowty version, however, at times I felt as though I had slipped into a parallel universe.
Access to source code, well, that was a different thing altogether. At Dowty, once proficiency at FORTRAN had been established, analysts could request access to a copy of the source code to attempt to fix errors or improve accuracy, this was quite tightly controlled and any changes would be placed in a logbook and text added to the source to explain what subroutines had been changed.
Eventually, changes would roll into the programs manual at the subsequent release.
At Menasco, there was no access to source code at all. It was all handled via one guy, a chap called Alvin Fong who was highly protective of the cache of programs and nobody except himself would alter or change any program. The problem was compounded by the fact that Alvin was usually a very busy man, concerned with his own discipline (Dynamics, Landing Predictions etc) so that any fixes or tweaks requested by the stress jockeys would go on an endless "back burner" eventually to be forgotten about or just discarded with disdain.
It was a puzzle then, that two different cultures of program management in competing companies would have a set of core programs that had almost identical inputs, similar outputs and most intriguingly, the same names...
Even the programs had the same names...
The methods for creating text files were different, the procedure for running and executing the programs were different but the actual programs, well, the input format was the same and the output was predominantly the same.
Which struck me as odd.
In fact, Menasco had their own manual for their programs that felt vaguely familiar, it wasn't as organized or as updated as the Dowty version, however, at times I felt as though I had slipped into a parallel universe.
Access to source code, well, that was a different thing altogether. At Dowty, once proficiency at FORTRAN had been established, analysts could request access to a copy of the source code to attempt to fix errors or improve accuracy, this was quite tightly controlled and any changes would be placed in a logbook and text added to the source to explain what subroutines had been changed.
Eventually, changes would roll into the programs manual at the subsequent release.
At Menasco, there was no access to source code at all. It was all handled via one guy, a chap called Alvin Fong who was highly protective of the cache of programs and nobody except himself would alter or change any program. The problem was compounded by the fact that Alvin was usually a very busy man, concerned with his own discipline (Dynamics, Landing Predictions etc) so that any fixes or tweaks requested by the stress jockeys would go on an endless "back burner" eventually to be forgotten about or just discarded with disdain.
It was a puzzle then, that two different cultures of program management in competing companies would have a set of core programs that had almost identical inputs, similar outputs and most intriguingly, the same names...
Cut and Paste
I was impressed with how organized the structures department at McDonnell Douglas was back in 1985, in fact they had their own, formal, structural manual that was not just an instruction manual of how to run the computer programs, it also presented theory behind the methods.
As the stress office at APPH had to produce formal reports using those methods, we were tasked in reproducing both the logic and the output format for our programs (written in BASIC) and went through a benchmark process to ensure that our programs results and output format matched theirs. The resulting output from our computer programs would then be "cut and pasted" onto our headed paper.
Literally.
When I arrived off the boat to work at Dowty in Ajax, Canada in 1988. The methods were about the same, computer programs (written in FORTRAN) were run on the mainframe via dumb terminals, printed on the big rattling Decwriter dot matrix printer (picture to follow) and then scissors and paste sticks used to add the output to headed paper for our formal reports.
The logic behind a lot of those programs had also been acquired in a similar way, theory from textbooks like Bruhn, Roark, Timoshenko or Maddux. or over time, theory filched from aeronautical trade publications quoting the likes of Melcon and Hoblit or Cozzone.
The bulk of accepted theory would be from more formal sources such as the Military handbook, DeHavilland, Boeing or McDonnell Douglas structures manuals and as I would eventually find out, from their competitors.
It seemed like an industrial standard that we had a sort of industrial standard.
As the stress office at APPH had to produce formal reports using those methods, we were tasked in reproducing both the logic and the output format for our programs (written in BASIC) and went through a benchmark process to ensure that our programs results and output format matched theirs. The resulting output from our computer programs would then be "cut and pasted" onto our headed paper.
Literally.
When I arrived off the boat to work at Dowty in Ajax, Canada in 1988. The methods were about the same, computer programs (written in FORTRAN) were run on the mainframe via dumb terminals, printed on the big rattling Decwriter dot matrix printer (picture to follow) and then scissors and paste sticks used to add the output to headed paper for our formal reports.
The logic behind a lot of those programs had also been acquired in a similar way, theory from textbooks like Bruhn, Roark, Timoshenko or Maddux. or over time, theory filched from aeronautical trade publications quoting the likes of Melcon and Hoblit or Cozzone.
The bulk of accepted theory would be from more formal sources such as the Military handbook, DeHavilland, Boeing or McDonnell Douglas structures manuals and as I would eventually find out, from their competitors.
It seemed like an industrial standard that we had a sort of industrial standard.
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