Electric Boat quality control measurement resistance

30 years before lecture (~1985). Tom proposes better weld inspection; shipyard rejects because new criterion means new compliance burden. Used to parallel current Caterpillar student case.

In fact, I have a student at Caterpillar, and he's been told to come up with a new physical inspection technique to inspect filler welds. Everybody's already taken all of the electromagnetic spectrum and the mechanical wave frequency spectrum to do inspection of welds. But he's supposed to find some new physical thing. They emailed me this week — he went out to operations and talked to this manager, and she said she didn't really want a new inspection technique, because it would be a new specification that she would have to meet. That happened to me 30 years ago at Electric Boat. I had a better way to inspect welds, and they threw me out of the shipyard practically, because the last thing they wanted was a new criterion they had to meet.

Tom comes to Electric Boat with a new NDT method; they want to throw him out of the shipyard. Used to make the point that the field needs better tests, not more tests.

For non-destructive testing, a lot of people would like that extra information. Early in my career I came up with some new technique to inspect some metal. I was working fairly closely with David Taylor — at Annapolis, now Taylor Carderock, the Navy's research laboratory — and I was working with people like Electric Boat. I came down, talked to Electric Boat, and said, "I've got a new way to test something." They wanted to throw me out of the shipyard. The last thing they wanted was another test they had to meet. There's a lot of truth to that. We need to spend more time coming up with good tests rather than more tests. You can test things forever and never get anything built.

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