In message , at 18:27:34 on Fri, 16 Apr
2021, Tweed remarked:
Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 13:14:11 on Fri, 16 Apr
2021, Tweed remarked:

That looks like a pretty basic flaw that should have been found and fixed
long ago, particularly as it's happened before, in Ireland!

Or similar failure modes on the Comet aircraft. Don't they teach this on
the first week of engineering courses, any more?

It’s what happens as the result of “efficiency�. In days gone by there
would be a core of long serving engineers in an organisation with the
corporate memory of what not to do again. These days it’s fashionable to
talk up changing jobs every few years and easing out the older experienced
staff because they are expensive. The modern practice is to claim that
everything can be captured in a specification or a standard. Unfortunately
that’s not the case....

Many outfits are doomed to keep on repeating the same mistakes because of
high staff turnover.

I agree that corporate memory is important, but proper engineers
are taught universal memory - which can then be applied to
whatever corporate they are working for this week.

It would make for an extremely long degree course to impart the knowledge
learnt from a career.

Two different things.

A degree course can plant a 'memory' that metal fatigue is "a thing",
and encourage designing it out.

A career during which someone discovers metal fatigue in a particular
component of a particular assembly (and remembers that), has the
disadvantage that first of all there first has to be a failure of that
component, and secondly it may not be obvious simply from that memory
that the failure mode could also occur in a different component of a
different assembly.
--
Roland Perry