USAF halts tanker deliveries/ tools, rubbish.

Maybe Boeing should consider a Maid service or Plane detailing crew?

 

This is not a new problem, it was living years ago when I was a mechanic on the B-50's and continues to be a problem. We used to have "clean sweeps" at the end of the shift and there were always tools and FOD to be found. It seems to be a disease with mechanics. I remember a KC-135 vertical fin that was shipped to Renton on a train from Twin Coach back east. A number 10 bucking bar had been left in in a space between ribs and during the trip it had vibrated its way down through one rib and was working on the rear spar. Drill shavings, candy wrappers, and dirt and dust have to be vacuumed from the spaces and the process signed off by a QA guy or gal. Now Boeing is talking about laying off 1000 inspectors in favor of "more high tech inspection processes." Their ammo belt is filled with foot bullets and a few have already been fired..

 

Bob- Sounds like they are crossing their feet to save bullets, too.

The AF really needs those airplanes, too.

 

Lockheed Martin had a VERY aggressive FOD-prevention program, and while not foolproof, it seemed to work pretty well. Looks like Boeing needs to step up their game!

(LM used an animated character in some of their FOD-awareness videos named "FOD-free Fred"!)

 

Read that it may be a reaction to the impending layoffs... unhappy inspectors 'getting even'...

 

Just about all the AF toolkits/tool boxes have foam cut-outs so you can tell whether a tool is missing at the end of a job. Pretty easy way to improve tool control.

 

That's how all the toolboxes are at Boeing too.
I don't know what exactly they found, but alot of times the FOD is tiny stuff that is very difficult to find. Things like little bits of wire, small pieces of string ties, rivet tails, little washers, that sort of stuff.

FOD seems to go in cycles where a site will go years with FOD prevention slowly becoming less and less prioritized, and then something will get missed. Then they will spool up a whole new FOD prevention team, training, requirements, and so on. Slowly those will get discontinued as other efforts take higher priority and the cycle begins again.

 

Having watched L3 Waco's iteration of shadowing the tool boxes, sign out sheets on the specific tools a worker takes into the aircraft and other techniques the focus looses touch with trying to actually accomplish work in any efficient manner. As for this Boeing problem it would be interesting to understand the details of the FOD - items of significance, nit picking by someone with nothing better to do, intentional bad work by the Boeing workers?

 

Even Grumman had that issue with the LEM. They turned it around on a rotisserie to shake out all the loose bits.

 

Items of significance go from tools down to dust, hair, and dirt. The first 48 Section pressure bulkheads from Canada for the 767 were rife with shavings, hair, dust, and dirt that was had been painted over by the SRF finish. They were sent back. The fuselage panels from Japan were absolutely clean and had NO white inspection markers on them.

 

I don't know how other companies do it, but every shop worker at L.M. wears a "personal pack", commonly known as a "FOD bag", around his or her waist. It has a window on the front where one inserts his/her badge. Everything that would ordinarily be in one's pockets and any jewelry (aside from what each person chooses to lock up in his/her personal locker) goes in the bag. Engineers also have a FOD bag which we would use every time we visited the shop. There were three levels of FOD awareness on the floor, with differing levels of procedures used depending on the criticality of the work done there.

Shop workers had a belt loop containing a bunch of tool chits, which were basically miniaturized versions of the worker's badge. Every time he/she took a tool out of a tool kit, a chit would go in the kit in its place. That way anyone looking for a tool would know who had it. All tools were required to be returned to the kit at the end of the shift, and two different people would have to sign the log that all the tools were back. A broken tool needed to be reported to a supervisor at once, and a search would be implemented to look for all missing parts of the tool. There were similar rules to control the use of "consumables" like fasteners. Old tool kits are gradually being replaced by a large cabinet that rather looks like a vending machine.

 

What, you never found whole rolls of safety wire in your aircraft after ta king delivery from the factory?

Bell helicopter hooked us up once with a roll of safety wire in the nacelle of a MV-22.
Humans are not perfect by any means. I don't care how good of a fod or tool program you have.

 

As the saying goes, make something idiot proof, and the idiots will adapt. That Russian rocket that blew up a few years ago had one of its sensors placed upside down. It was designed so it could only be installed in one certain way. They found that it had been hammered in upside down.

A strict FOD policy that has zero qualms about removing idiots from the workplace is a sound idea.

 

That decision is absolutely going to bite them in the ass. Things are bad now, just wait until there are no eyeballs watching anything.

 

Poor communications between contractors can result in this as well. One of the six V-22 Osprey prototypes crashed and was written off in Wilmington, DE almost as soon as it had taken off on its maiden flight. As I heard it, Bell, who was responsible for building the wing and engine installation, discovered, just before shipping the aircraft's assembly off to Boeing for final assembly, that the aileron controls had been installed (or programmed) backwards. What they DIDN'T tell Boeing is that they had fixed the error! So Boeing, assuming that the error was still uncorrected, reversed whatever had been done, thus UNDOING Bell's fix! So when the pilot took off, the controls were reversed, and the aircraft briefly wallowed through the air before piling into the ground, fortunately without serious injury to the crew.

 

They used to have the same problem with F-15 elevators. A part that could easily be installed backwards reversed the controls. They were going to court marshal some poor crew chief over an accident caused by installing one backwards before the brass figured out it was their fault for not fixing what was a known problem as soon as it was discovered.

 

Are controls not checked on the ground prior to using the aircraft? Wouldn't a simple moving the stick in each direction while watching the air surfaces have prevented something like that?

 

People get shot with unloaded guns all the time.

As I recall one of the Nighthawk prototypes went down on takeoff because someone cabled up a pair of control system boxes backwards. Seems the boxes used exactly the same connectors and there was nothing to prevent them being connected the the airframe harness backwards on installation. It was being flown by a very experienced test pilot in a closely controlled test program.

Lots of missed chances there.

 

Cut out and lazer etched with the toolkit number on the tool down the the smallest jewelers screwdriver so if FOD is found and proper tool control is not done the owner is found quickly...Ive seen some pretty big reprimands done as a result....

 

That is something that I was taught 75 years ago. The old thumb up rule. Thumb up and move the control to the right and the right aileron should be up. Thumb up and move the control to the left and the left aileron should be up, and the same for the other controls. As a ground crew in the war, we stood in front of the airplane and signaled that the controls were responding correctly to inputs before taxiing out. Kind of basic.

 

I flew the KC-135 for 20 years. Part of each preflight check is we would move all of the flight controls and the crew chief would tell us what he saw for control surface movements. More modern transport aircraft have a gauge in the cockpit that shows all of the control surfaces. Part of every taxi check is to verify correct and full movement of the flight controls.

 

Crew chiefs watched the flight controls during flight control checks on our F-111s. They were trained to know how they should move during the checks. They were also involved in the checks, moving AOA and yaw sensors during the checks. No time to do that on airliners, I guess.