Re: [time-nuts] HP Stories: Cesium Standards on Subs and Sperry
Love milspec stories! Always reminds me of some of my favorite quotes: “Mechanical rules are never a substitute for clarity of thought.” -- Brian Kernighan ". . . rules are a substitute for thought . . ." -- Robert Gunning "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds . . ." -- R.W. Emerson Don On 2019-02-24 06:37, Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems) wrote: While HP wasn't a direct defense contractor, we did sell a lot of test equipment to defense contractors.The big American submarines had a Cesium Standard or two as part of their instrumentation systems.I know little about the application, but heard it was part of the communication and/or navigation systems.Maybe some of you have experience with this, and can add to the story. None the less, Sperry corporation was a sub-contractor into the greater DOD eco-system, and integrated the 5061A into some larger system they sold to the submarine builders.Sperry was a "real" defense contractor, and had to live by all the DOD rules.There were a number of defense contractors in Silicon Valley, with Lockheed Missiles and Space Company being perhaps the largest employer in the area. Both my father, and my wife's father were engineers at LSMC for their careers. We used to joke at my High School that "everyone's dad worked for Lockheed."Thus, DOD companies were not a foreign concept to me. But they way the DOD procurement process worked was very unlike how HP worked and interfaced with our commercial customers. Sperry wanted to turn HP into defense supplier when they purchased 5061A's from us. First, they had their special "Sperry Blue" paint job. Our sheet metal and paint shops had to custom build the cosmetic parts for Sperry in a lovely baby blue color.Next, they wanted to make sure what was purchased was exactly what was specified. EXACTLY. The technique to enforce this was to document and inspect everything.A special Sperry material list was created, with every resistor, screw and wire listed. HP part numbers, approved suppliers, and supplier part numbers, for everything. It turns out there are a lot of components in a 5061A. Sperry would then insist that HP segregate all the components that were going into their sacred 5061As, and have our incoming quality department inspect every single tiny part, to ensure it was the correct component, coming from proper suppliers. The attention to detail was both impressive and maddening.This was way outside our normal manufacturing processes, and a huge hassle. The representatives from Sperry were from a different planet than HP people.This part of Sperry had it's headquarters in the NYC area, and the lead representative was like a movie character from a God Father movie. Short, plump, arrogant, Italian, in charge. He was THE MAN, and expected to be treated as such. He was cordial on the surface, but was unmovable when trying to negotiate what we though would be a sensible compromise of some kind. To him, change, any change, was bad.Because if anything ever happened, for the rest of human history, that could be traced back to a change he allowed, he would be held accountable.He wanted to be held accountable for buying 8 Cesium Standards, not for adding risk to that purchase. He had a young assistant to grind through all the details. This guy was about 30, and knew his role in the game. There were procurement rules his company must follow, and his job was to make sure every detail got done. EVERY DETAIL.He br ought exactly zero judgment or critical thinking to the process. Mr. Mafia man told a story about why not changing things was so important. As I recall, Sperry made some kind of targeting system for artillery, probably dating back to WWII, and a vendor had upgraded the insulation on some wiring from a fabric weave to more modern extruded plastic insulation.For some reason this led to a failure. (Likely heat related). This was used as indisputable proof that even the most innocent looking changes can cause a problem, problems are the enemy, and change was it's root cause. And then HP invented the 5061B, and changed a bunch of stuff from the 5061A. Sperry had a contract that required another batch of HP Cesium Standards, and wanted nothing to do with the 5061B. They had made several previous purchases of 5061As, and their overall system had not changed, and they didn't want the Cesium Standard to Change either.Since I was the 5061B guy, and young and expendable and ignorant (never had worked with Sperry before), I was assigned the task of getting Sperry happy with the 5061B.I remember Jeanie Young, an energetic women from our marketing department being the lead contact with Sperry on business stuff (fuss with contracts, and be responsible for the wine-and-dine aspects), as I did the "engineering". I think our basic position is that not only we don't make the 5061A any more, we COULD
Re: [time-nuts] HP Stories: Cesium Standards on Subs and Sperry
On 2/24/19 5:37 AM, Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems) wrote: While HP wasn't a direct defense contractor, we did sell a lot of test equipment to defense contractors.The big American submarines had a Cesium Standard or two as part of their instrumentation systems.I know little about the application, but heard it was part of the communication and/or navigation systems.Maybe some of you have experience with this, and can add to the story. None the less, Sperry corporation was a sub-contractor into the greater DOD eco-system, and integrated the 5061A into some larger system they sold to the submarine builders.Sperry was a "real" defense contractor, and had to live by all the DOD rules.There were a number of defense contractors in Silicon Valley, with Lockheed Missiles and Space Company being perhaps the largest employer in the area. Both my father, and my wife's father were engineers at LSMC for their careers. We used to joke at my High School that "everyone's dad worked for Lockheed."Thus, DOD companies were not a foreign concept to me. But they way the DOD procurement process worked was very unlike how HP worked and interfaced with our commercial customers. Yes, and this how you wind up with $600 hammers/toilet seats/aircraft coffee makers. It afflicts the space business too - We call it "heritage" - for instance, you're designing a new spacecraft. A subsystem, or box, or anything, that already exists, you know the mass and power of, so you can put it into your "Master Equipment List" (MEL) and only add 5% margin. Something new, might have to have significantly more margin, maybe 25% or 30%. But on most spacecraft you're severely mass and power constrained, because the rolled up budgets for those are often set by "what did the last one do" - or maybe you've got the max mass you can send to Mars on the rockets that are available. Even if the new design is infinitely superior in performance, the additional risk of "something new" gets in the way. Most NASA Announcements of Opportunity (AO, similar to a RFP) say "Technology shall be at TRL 6, or a plan shall be presented to insure that it will reach TRL 6 by Preliminary Design Review" TRL 6 = "demonstrated in a relevant environment" - basically, you've built the box and run it through thermal vacuum and vibe testing, but maybe you used parts that aren't screened. Notwithstanding that the parts list for that heritage box includes parts that are no longer available, or that have insanely high minimum order quantity (the mfrs way of telling you, "use another part, but if you insist") - that's what gets designed in. And as Hugh points out, there's a whole team of people who look for ANY discrepancy from the original design. And those people aren't empowered to make judgement calls about whether the change is good or bad - it's a change. One can, in fact, get waivers. Or, you can, if you have sufficient budget (Hah!) you could say that your primary design alternative leading up to PDR is to use the Heritage Unit, but you'll be developing a new one to replace it, and if it's ready, you can pitch it at PDR (or maybe CDR). However, it might be easier (from a risk assessment, budget, and schedule standpoint) to just use the old design. That is, the extra pain and cost for finding obsolete parts (Rochester Electronics, "the leader in the trailing edge of electronics" is your friend) is less than the pain and cost of getting waivers for a new design. ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@lists.febo.com To unsubscribe, go to http://lists.febo.com/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts_lists.febo.com and follow the instructions there.
Re: [time-nuts] HP Stories: Cesium Standards on Subs and Sperry
On 2/24/2019 5:37 AM, Rice, Hugh (IPH Writing Systems) wrote: While HP wasn't a direct defense contractor, we did sell a lot of test equipment to defense contractors.The big American submarines had a Cesium Standard or two as part of their instrumentation systems.I know little about the application, but heard it was part of the communication and/or navigation systems.Maybe some of you have experience with this, and can add One of my jobs between college and HP was with Boeing. The military half of Boeing, not the airplane manufacturer. The head manager of test equipment told me that the default test equipment vendor was HP. They only looked at HP competitors in the event that HP simply didn't even make what was required. Who knew I would someday work for HP for 35 years? My old Boeing buddies would have been proud; they all told me to leave. Part of the HP orientation process about "The HP Way" covered how HP did a lot of military contracts during WWII. When the war ended, so did the contracts and the post war recession started. Dave had lay off a bunch of workers. He stated that HP would never again get involved (at least in any serious way) with government contracts because "We don't want to be a hire and fire outfit". Boeing, of course, was exactly that. Rick ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@lists.febo.com To unsubscribe, go to http://lists.febo.com/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts_lists.febo.com and follow the instructions there.
[time-nuts] HP Stories: Cesium Standards on Subs and Sperry
While HP wasn't a direct defense contractor, we did sell a lot of test equipment to defense contractors.The big American submarines had a Cesium Standard or two as part of their instrumentation systems.I know little about the application, but heard it was part of the communication and/or navigation systems.Maybe some of you have experience with this, and can add to the story. None the less, Sperry corporation was a sub-contractor into the greater DOD eco-system, and integrated the 5061A into some larger system they sold to the submarine builders.Sperry was a "real" defense contractor, and had to live by all the DOD rules.There were a number of defense contractors in Silicon Valley, with Lockheed Missiles and Space Company being perhaps the largest employer in the area. Both my father, and my wife's father were engineers at LSMC for their careers. We used to joke at my High School that "everyone's dad worked for Lockheed."Thus, DOD companies were not a foreign concept to me. But they way the DOD procurement process worked was very unlike how HP worked and interfaced with our commercial customers. Sperry wanted to turn HP into defense supplier when they purchased 5061A's from us. First, they had their special "Sperry Blue" paint job. Our sheet metal and paint shops had to custom build the cosmetic parts for Sperry in a lovely baby blue color.Next, they wanted to make sure what was purchased was exactly what was specified. EXACTLY. The technique to enforce this was to document and inspect everything.A special Sperry material list was created, with every resistor, screw and wire listed. HP part numbers, approved suppliers, and supplier part numbers, for everything. It turns out there are a lot of components in a 5061A. Sperry would then insist that HP segregate all the components that were going into their sacred 5061As, and have our incoming quality department inspect every single tiny part, to ensure it was the correct component, coming from proper suppliers. The attention to detail was both impressive and maddening.This was way outside our normal manufacturing processes, and a huge hassle. The representatives from Sperry were from a different planet than HP people. This part of Sperry had it's headquarters in the NYC area, and the lead representative was like a movie character from a God Father movie. Short, plump, arrogant, Italian, in charge. He was THE MAN, and expected to be treated as such. He was cordial on the surface, but was unmovable when trying to negotiate what we though would be a sensible compromise of some kind. To him, change, any change, was bad.Because if anything ever happened, for the rest of human history, that could be traced back to a change he allowed, he would be held accountable.He wanted to be held accountable for buying 8 Cesium Standards, not for adding risk to that purchase.He had a young assistant to grind through all the details. This guy was about 30, and knew his role in the game. There were procurement rules his company must follow, and his job was to make sure every detail got done. EVERY DETAIL.He brought exactly zero judgment or critical thinking to the process. Mr. Mafia man told a story about why not changing things was so important. As I recall, Sperry made some kind of targeting system for artillery, probably dating back to WWII, and a vendor had upgraded the insulation on some wiring from a fabric weave to more modern extruded plastic insulation.For some reason this led to a failure. (Likely heat related). This was used as indisputable proof that even the most innocent looking changes can cause a problem, problems are the enemy, and change was it's root cause. And then HP invented the 5061B, and changed a bunch of stuff from the 5061A. Sperry had a contract that required another batch of HP Cesium Standards, and wanted nothing to do with the 5061B. They had made several previous purchases of 5061As, and their overall system had not changed, and they didn't want the Cesium Standard to Change either.Since I was the 5061B guy, and young and expendable and ignorant (never had worked with Sperry before), I was assigned the task of getting Sperry happy with the 5061B.I remember Jeanie Young, an energetic women from our marketing department being the lead contact with Sperry on business stuff (fuss with contracts, and be responsible for the wine-and-dine aspects), as I did the "engineering". I think our basic position is that not only we don't make the 5061A any more, we COULD NOT make a 5061A. Either take the 5061B, or nothing. While the 5061B wasn't exactly the 5061A, nothing else available in the world was even close. They were stuck with us and the hated 5061B and all its changes. One of the even more annoying aspects of the 5061B is that we had gone thorough many of the systems,
