Auughhhhh

Another example of why my job sucks… We received a customer complaints that some welded parts we sent them were falling apart. I went into inventory to check our stock, and found parts sitting in the box that had fallen apart. The welds were done so poorly that it basically amounted to burn marks, not welds. Everybody’s first reaction, as usual, was “How could the inspector have let this happen?” Nevermind that someone sat at the welder and made these pieces and put them in the box this way. Let’s just blame the inspector who is supposed to stop by every 40 minutes to see how it’s going. In speaking with production, I am told that these parts are resistance welded, but they should be projection welded. The resistance welding is taking way too much heat to do these parts, and ruining the welder tips. Engineering, however, says NO. The chief engineer claims we’ve Always made them this way, so this way should be fine, it’s simply a problem of poor inspection. (Root cause analysis at its finest!) I am also told that the reason we never did these with projection welds is that the tooling was too expensive for the small order quantities on this part. In other words, the real root cause is (as Always) that the owners are too cheap to provide the proper equipment. As always, I am not going to get away with saying this on our forms, let alone tell a customer. So, fine, I suggest shortening the inspection interval by half. It’s a poor excuse for a fix, but about all I can arrange. I discuss it with the plant manager, he understands, and agrees to it. For some reason I ask him to sign the form to show he agreed.
Now, the paperwork to change the inspection interval routes past the chief engineer. He blows a fuse. This is a Horrible idea, not solving the real problem, how dare I, why didn’t the inspector do a better job, this isn’t an inspection problem, I’m not addressing root cause… (Yes, he really did blame the inspector while saying it’s not an inspection issue.) He refuses to allow the change. I mention that in the arena of root cause, using projection welds was suggested. Again, no way, no need, always did it resistance before and never had a problem… (Production’s take on it is that we’ve always done it that way, and always had a ton of problems with it. But they are used to being forced to struggle through inadequate processes with no support.) He says he is going to talk to customer service, and storms off. Some time later, he comes down to my office and tells me to call a meeting. Not that he can’t do it, or ask his secretary to do it, but whatever.
Meeting starts with the chief engineer reading the ‘inspection interval’ plan off the form with arrogant disdain. The plant manager then says how horrible, how could I do this! I point out he signed off on it, so he mumbles something about not knowing what it meant. Right. The production supervisor again mentions we should projection weld these. The chief engineer says “Yeah, OK, we’ll look into it.” Then he starts complaining again that this addresses production problems, but we still need to address the inadequate inspection. I just want to strangle someone… To make it worse, I then hear that after the meeting the chief engineer questioned why nobody looked into projection welding earlier. More strangling fantasies…
Let’s recap. When I tried to solve the problem, engineering said no. Then when I tried a second-best approach, engineering said no. Then engineering made me call a meeting so they could discuss it, at which they agreed to my first suggestion when someone else brought it up, and expressed horror that I would even suggest the second idea. No matter what I did, I lost.