Your friend's comment reminds me of a Fortune 500 client I had a decade
back, that decided to go metric for the following reason:
Most of their manufacturing equipment was designed and built in the US. It
was distributed to factories all over the globe. Production and maintenance
surveys showed that while same the machinery lasted decades in the US, it
"wore out" abroad in a fraction of that time and productivity was
accordingly lower. The reason for that misery was simple. The foreign
(metric) establishments were finding the US-supplied spare and replacement
parts too expensive. They reverse-engineered the machines and contracted
local shops to make the needed parts. Not understanding the US measuring
system and drafting/design practices, the parts were nevertheless not to the
US spec, and while of a "good quality" they did not fit as they were
supposed to. Design engineers will understand what I mean.
The corporation had a choice: Either to force all subsidiaries to buy
US-made parts, or to adopt the engineering practices other countries used -
i.e. metric. Since the former was not enforceable, adopting the worldwide
(metric) practices that the local shops understood was selected. This
decision was, obviously, influenced also by the long term, strategic
thinking of the corporate management.
Stan J.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Palumbo" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Sent: 08 Mar 12, Wednesday 09:53
Subject: [USMA:40537] Airbus vs. Boeing as it relates to metrication.
With the recent debacle of Airbus winning out the US Air Force refueller
contract over Boeing, I couldn't help but notice the military purchasers
were defending their decision by talking about enormous cost savings. It
dawned on me that the Airbus model would be entirely metric, making it
easier to be assembled all over the world, and easier to be repaired all
over the world. Surely that's a cost savings over Boeing.
When I mentioned this to my friend Greg, a former engineer for Boeing, he
shared the following tidbit with me:
"That metric argument is interesting, though. In early 1999 while working
for Boeing I went to China for three months to help teach a Chinese
company how to perform a certain major structural modification to 747's.
One of the biggest, and most unanticipated problems was teaching them how
to work non-metric. It's not just a problem with tooling, either, all the
sheet metal on the aircraft is in non-metric thicknesses. Sheet metal is
purchased from vendors by the company that is working on the aircraft, so
the Chinese company would either have to purchase non-metric sheet metal
from a U.S. company or spend the big bucks to get some other non-U.S.
company to manufacture the stuff."
That seems like a horribly inefficient way to go about repairs, and it's
no wonder to me that Boeing had numerous issues with expensive repair
costs outside of the US, particularly in southeast Asia.
If the Airbus contract stays (Boeing is protesting), then there will be a
new assembly plant in Alabama using nothing but metric for these planes.
Regards,
Mike
