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FAA Repair Station Roadmap

Turning a company around requires change! The previous paradigms have been paralyzed by conditions that can include environment, competition, technology, personnel, training, and most importantly, the corporate culture. The first thing that must be done. . .

Hanging by a Thread

by Peter Friedman Created: October 9, 2006

Maintenance shops get their nuts and bolts from many sources — some of which are OK, some of which may not be OK! Have you ever taken a good look at the nuts and bolts used to put an aircraft together? Have you ever considered that, in many cases, lives may be hanging by a thread? How can we protect ourselves from sub-standard hardware? One way is to educate ourselves about standard hardware so that we can at least make thoughtful determinations as to the integrity and quality of the fasteners we are buying.

The Engine Overhaul Myth

by Peter Friedman Created: October 25, 2007

In order to discuss engine overhauls, we should start by looking at a few regulations. FAR 43.2 requires any “person” [defined at FAR 1] that describes a product as being “overhauled” in any required maintenance record [defined at FAR 43.9] to have “[used] methods, techniques, and practices acceptable to the Administrator ...” Further, the product must have been “...disassembled, cleaned, inspected, repaired as necessary, and reassembled ...”

The Politics of Quality

By: Peter M. Friedman, CQA‎ : Published October ‎14, ‎2017

Quality based on the Holy Grail
  • "Conformance to requirements",
  • "fitness for use",
  • "totality of features and characteristics of a product that bear on its ability to satisfy a given need". 

These are current definitions of quality based on the Holy Grail, total customer satisfaction. Why do we need to satisfy the customer? To stay in business of course. Nowhere is this concept more epitomized than with the problem Jack-in-the-Box restaurants had with tainted hamburger meat. Jack-in-the-Box served millions of hamburgers that didn't kill anyone or make anyone sick but that made no difference to their customers. Their business dropped 40% nationwide after the news media reported the problem. I frequent several fast-food restaurants in our area and I periodically witness employees picking up dropped food from the floor and putting it back on the tray, wiping their runny noses and then handling food, dropping drink cups and then using them, sneezing into food being handled, and employees exiting restrooms without washing their hands. Customers usually don't see things because they aren't looking!

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