No... I've been a maintenance worker.
If you needed "Engineering" to help you fix every problem you faced everyday in a production line, the Engineer would need to come to work with you every day.
If you stopped the production line until "someone higher up" came down to approve your changes, you'd better make sure you have a strong reason to do so as the company will be losing millions while you wait :).
You just solve problems all the time, every day, and it's really up to the technician to know when something requires notifying Engineering or not. Notify too much and they'll get rid of you for being annoying... notify too little and shit like this can happen, but in the very large majority of cases, it doesn't.
I haven't been a maintenance worker, but I've worked as an SWE in a company with a large IT dept. Sometimes it's faster to work around them to find solutions to doing your job. Both sides have good intentions but the IT dept. cannot move nimbly.
I don't have a problem with technicians solving problems. But as an engineer I would like to codify the solution so that A) we're implementing a controlled process and B) if there's a better solution out there I can make that recommendation or fix the system. When you take it upon yourself then problems only happen if you don't communicate.
> If you stopped the production line until "someone higher up" came down to approve your changes, you'd better make sure you have a strong reason to do so as the company will be losing millions while you wait
Then what was the whole point of the Andon cable lesson that American manufacturers had to learn from Toyota?
Is "Irresponsibility" I feel -- without any true blame / shame though.
Complex work is hard.
Self-management is a big, under-appreciated part of that.
So Irresponsibility maybe not on the individual Worker's shoulders, but on all of us for under-appreciating the risky challenges of being a motivated worker in a complex job.
yeah IDK if the Worker is to blame, seems like an obvious design flaw, e.g. they should not rely on 'soap' to keep a flat pedal cover attached to another flat pedal.
I actually blame the engineering/design department for this one.
The soap revealed the issue, but why aren't the peddles a single piece? Why do they have a sticker on them?
Even without the soap step, what happens if the cabin gets too hot or the factory has too much dust in it?
If you look at your car's peddles (and I'm including mine, a Tesla model 3) you'll notice they are basically a single piece mechanically fit together. Not some sticker glued for style.
Right, it's always dependant on circumstances. I try to stress as much as possible that you always need to design things in such a way that even the dumbest, newest assembler will still be able to build it correctly. And often times we review drawings/instructions and find lots of poorly outlined procedures.
But sometimes you get something like "The blue wire ran out, but I still had a bunch of light blue, so I just used that instead". It can be a killer.
