All,
To avoid dangerous thread drift elsewhere, I thought I'd start a discussion here of ...
Kelly's Rules
Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works (registered trademark)
and
Skunk-Works-type projects.
I had the rare opportunity to work with them on a project a few years ago, and the informality of their work was a stark contrast to the usual anal-retentive approach in the aerospace industry. They would give us parts from a wrecked aircraft to work with, functionality unknown, marked in masking tape instead of color-coded status labels.
And they gave me an official skunk pin, which I lost at an ISDC a few years back. I knew they came from a company store, and just found them on-line while looking for a Kelly's Rules poster ...
http://lerc.aghosted.com/shop/index.php ... acs/id/50/
Skunk Works
They knew exactly what the parts were. They were hoping to re-use them on a new project my company was putting together for them. They knew the parts were not reliable for flight, but were perfectly willing to use them in lab tests, if I could get them to work.
The usual aerospace company would have applied a color-coded tag to the parts, complete with incident number, date, airframe, and a bunch of other balderdash, bagged them, and stored them in some cabinet never to be seen again just in case they wanted to do a further investigation. And if they wanted to build a new project, they'd want to procure new parts with a clean provenance.
At first I was bewildered by their casual handling of parts, until I remembered who I was dealing with.
The informality of the Skunk Works is delightful. They avoid as many un-necessary steps as possible, letting the designers have maximum freedom. Then, to transition to production, they turn the design over to a bunch of mundanes who get to worry about paint specs, fastener grades, and other minutiae.
The usual aerospace company would have applied a color-coded tag to the parts, complete with incident number, date, airframe, and a bunch of other balderdash, bagged them, and stored them in some cabinet never to be seen again just in case they wanted to do a further investigation. And if they wanted to build a new project, they'd want to procure new parts with a clean provenance.
At first I was bewildered by their casual handling of parts, until I remembered who I was dealing with.
The informality of the Skunk Works is delightful. They avoid as many un-necessary steps as possible, letting the designers have maximum freedom. Then, to transition to production, they turn the design over to a bunch of mundanes who get to worry about paint specs, fastener grades, and other minutiae.
Hope they can keep it going. The confluence of the F35 and LCS-1 debacles is not promising for Lockmart.Tom Ligon wrote:They knew exactly what the parts were. They were hoping to re-use them on a new project my company was putting together for them. They knew the parts were not reliable for flight, but were perfectly willing to use them in lab tests, if I could get them to work.
The usual aerospace company would have applied a color-coded tag to the parts, complete with incident number, date, airframe, and a bunch of other balderdash, bagged them, and stored them in some cabinet never to be seen again just in case they wanted to do a further investigation. And if they wanted to build a new project, they'd want to procure new parts with a clean provenance.
At first I was bewildered by their casual handling of parts, until I remembered who I was dealing with.
The informality of the Skunk Works is delightful. They avoid as many un-necessary steps as possible, letting the designers have maximum freedom. Then, to transition to production, they turn the design over to a bunch of mundanes who get to worry about paint specs, fastener grades, and other minutiae.
Vae Victis