OV9

Tell me about a time you made a mistake at work...

https://www.theautopian.com/i-made-a-hu ... 5-ford-gt/

I started reading that yesterday but got bored before I actually got to the part about the mistake they made . I assume it was something to do with the casting process?

Hates_ wrote: Fri Apr 08, 2022 11:55 am Tell me about a time you made a mistake at work...

https://www.theautopian.com/i-made-a-hu ... 5-ford-gt/

Interesting stuff cheers

That's a good story.

I won't go into any details, but my first job after uni was in a manufacturing site. I went into the group who provided the tooling for manufacture - but at the front end. I took digital files from a large number of customer design departments and modified them as needed to ensure we could get good manufacturing yields (it was quite amazing to me how few designers knew how shizzle was made, and they'd send in designs that would end up with huge scrap once you factored in the various tolerance build-ups as products moved through the manufacturing process). Modified digital design files were then pushed on to the next stage.

After around 18months I was pretty good at it, and had built strong relationships with customers, so they were happy for me to modify shizzle and tell them later, rather than ask and place the job on hold whilst we awaited permission from their design bods.

Cue a new customer introduced, me working on the job late into the evening (as it was red hot to impress said new customer), and finding something weird in their design that I decided to "correct" as I felt it was totally unnecessary. I didn't ask permission as it was already late evening and nobody answered their phones (nobody had mobiles then), and as I rolled out the door around 10pm after sending the tooling files onto the manufacturing teams, I completely forgot to send the customer notice of the modification I'd made.

All was cool until a couple of weeks later the customer had received and rejected the entire initial batch of product as they didn't work. Our product couldn't be reworked to correct my fukup. Entire batch scrapped, and customer screaming as their lines were now down awaiting new bits from us. Ah.

I got a nice written warning, and it proved to be a great life lesson in humility - sometimes you don't know as much as you think you do.

Ha, that's a great story @mik. Harsh to give you a warning over an honest mistake like that, do you know how much it cost?

Yikes! Quite a story there @mik!

Not manufacturing but one time I made a maths mistake when calculating shipping rates for my work that ended up costing about £20k. Suffice to say I never got my raise or bonus that year

Two that stand out

1. Planned a new server build room. Tired, late, ordered 4x 800mm deep cabinets, rather than 1000m deep cabs. Room built, cabs fitted and cabled in. Look amazing. Tech's arrived on site and wondered why they couldn't get any of the servers to fit properly. "Is it too late to rebuilt this room a week before we go live?"

2. Dismantling a small new cabinet, everything was crammed in, couldn't see the cable runs. Couldn't remove a panel, it was snagged on something...gave it a yank and out it came. Great! Oh....wait, why is the fibre between the two buildings down? What's this frayed optical cable flapping around in the cab? Turns out people get angry when an entire building is down for 2 days.

Not me, but I went on a Delphi EV course this week, and one of the chaps on the course told us about the first time he had a Lexus CT200h in for service.

He put it on the ramp, put it up in the air and drained the oil. What he didn't know is the car was still turned on, but as it was a hybrid it wasnt running its combustion engine, he didnt know he hadn't turned it off as the engine stopped he presumed he had.

About 30 seconds later it started up the engine, as I guess it saw the voltage drop below a set amount, and by the time he managed to lower it to try stop it, it had done so itself, by seizing the engine.

An expensive lesson

A slight oversight in my calculations meant we sent out £200k of shopping vouchers that shouldn’t have been issued.

I think the silliest mistake I made at work was speccing up a CCTV system for someone, custom stuff, got overexcited about the tech being used and completely forgot to order an IR floodlight. I didn't realise till installation day.

Client not impressed. Install ripped out. Company about £2k down as a result.

Oops.

Taught me to not get obsessed with the tech, and to remember the basics

I did the classic 'put the full stop in the wrong place' on a CNC lathe which caused the thing to plow into the chuck and make a mess and then followed it by borderline writing off a five axis milling machine within the same week. That one was simply being cautious and checking for clearances as the head 'rapid' into position, and then restarting from the wrong point of the program. Memory is a bit vague now but it basically didn't like being at full rapid travel into a metal bar about 400mm diameter weighing about 1.5 tonnes. I think it ripped the entire head off the machine and cracked the casting which held it and one of the five axis still worked.

Was about 150k a week to have the production line down, and while the lathe was fixed in a few days the milling machine needed a one off casting made to fix it by the company in Germany. Took about four months and while workarounds got put in place I guessed it was about a million quid bill.

I didn't get fired somehow.

Also the original story is cool AF

I'd suggest the supplier in question never got another Ford contract again.

Sundayjumper wrote: Sat Apr 09, 2022 11:29 pm A slight oversight in my calculations meant we sent out £200k of shopping vouchers that shouldn’t have been issued.

Rounding error?

No stories as jolly as yours from me!

Never sure if a mistake makes me really learn or makes me so paranoid about the same mistake again that I learn maladaptive strategies that open up to other errors?

Not so many for me.

I shut down the port of Felixstowe for a few hours - no ships could come nor go.

I broke a UK terrestrial TV channel's streaming service, for most of a morning.

An online retailer was impacted by a whoop-see I did with a configuration, meaning no-one could actually checkout their online baskets to buy anything, again for most of a morning.

Those were the most memorable at least.

The problem is that when you work for a company that does so much online for other people, it's not a case of if you screw up, but rather when.

Nothing as funny/expensive as a lot here but I was responsible for breaking the only Focus RS in Australia for engineering evaluation at one time. Sidewall torn out of a front tyre on a spirited drive and spares were several weeks away.

Many many many pissed off colleagues and a seriously pissed off boss

ZedLeg wrote: Fri Apr 08, 2022 11:57 am I started reading that yesterday but got bored before I actually got to the part about the mistake they made . I assume it was something to do with the casting process?

It's quite the thorough bit of engineering dissection! I enjoyed it, learned about alluminium casting/forging and stuff

Summary, the semi-molten high pressure aluminiun was too cold & oxidised to knit together properly in that part of the mold. X-ray inspection can't find that kind of material fault, cue epic clusterfuck.

The "capability" thing is a nasty one. Well do I remember being part of a prestige development & launch program where a particularly vital part caused no problems at all until the very final full speed line run where it proceeded to fail about 30% of the time. A stop build was called which delayed Job#1 even though it is writ that "thou shalt not stop the line". Manufacturing will scream at you about how very very large ammounts of money are going down the toilet every hour. Engineers were sleeping under their desks for a couple of weeks before a temporary fix was found. Sadly, supplier was not let go as they were cheap

Later I discovered the real root cause with a dodgy manager signing off a component target deviation a couple of years before the J#1 debarcle. Needless to say he was promoted for his services to thrift and ineptitude.

Thanks for the For Dummies transcription Rob

Switched the power off in the whole of Uganda and a third of Kenya.

Dave!