(This is intended as curiosity, not disagreement.)
Instead, the industry should be more like the Korean shipyards, which are able to deliver reliably on schedule, with higher quality and lower cost. They do this by inspecting the work product, rather than the process used to create it: “test the weld, not the welder.”
Is it possible in general to “test the weld”? I’m thinking of things like, if a building is supposed to stand up to a certain magnitude of earthquake, or a bridge to a certain amount of wind, is that something you can test? Or can you learn it by inspection somehow? Or, can you test that individual components of the structure do what they’re supposed to, and then you use your physics knowledge to confirm that the whole structure will stand what it’s supposed to?
I vaguely recall an incident that happened partly because the production used some type of epoxy in a situation where regulations required a different type of epoxy. Could something like that have been discovered by inspecting the product? (I’m getting this from the podcast “causality”, but I don’t remember the incident or details. Of course this shows that “test the welder” can fail too. Turns out, sometimes people don’t follow regulations.)
(This is intended as curiosity, not disagreement.)
Is it possible in general to “test the weld”? I’m thinking of things like, if a building is supposed to stand up to a certain magnitude of earthquake, or a bridge to a certain amount of wind, is that something you can test? Or can you learn it by inspection somehow? Or, can you test that individual components of the structure do what they’re supposed to, and then you use your physics knowledge to confirm that the whole structure will stand what it’s supposed to?
I vaguely recall an incident that happened partly because the production used some type of epoxy in a situation where regulations required a different type of epoxy. Could something like that have been discovered by inspecting the product? (I’m getting this from the podcast “causality”, but I don’t remember the incident or details. Of course this shows that “test the welder” can fail too. Turns out, sometimes people don’t follow regulations.)