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GM Names Names, Suspends Two Engineers Over Ignition-Switch Safety

Posted by timothy on from the laying-blame dept.

cartechboy (2660665) writes "GM said it has placed two engineers on paid leave in connection with its massive recall probe of 2 million vehicles. Now, GM is asking NASA to advise on whether those cars are safe to drive even with the ignition key alone. Significantly, individual engineers now have their names in print and face a raft of inquiries what they did or didn't know, did or didn't do, and when. A vulnerability for GM: One engineer may have tried to re-engineer the faulty ignition switch without changing the part number—an unheard-of practice in the industry. Is it a good thing that people who engineer for a living can now get their names on national news for parts designed 10 years ago? The next time your mail goes down, should we know the name of the guy whose code flaw may have caused that?"

6 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. Hero ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What follows is my baseless personal opinion based only on what I see at similar businesses ---
    The engineer that changed the part without changing the part number and without management knowing intentionally did it behind their back because management wouldn't let him make the change. Everyone knew about the problem. Management knew changing the part was akin to admitting the fault. The engineer did it on his own to save lives - company be damned. And he kept the part number the same so that no one would know.

    1. Re:Hero ? by gnoshi · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Changing part without changing part number is something which the engineer shouldn't have done. Sure, management wouldn't let him make the change and that is bad. However, by making a change without following the basic accepted procedures meant that sleuth work needed to be done to even identify that a change had been made. The engineer clearly did something wrong. That in no way reduces the responsibility of management for their decisions and the consequences of those decisions.

      That said, naming names of an engineer is a really bad precedent. What is the goal GM is trying to achieve here. Do they want people to go break the guy's windows? Burn down his house? Call him in the middle of the night or deliver pizza? Apart from potentially removing the guy's livelihood for the remainder of his life because no-one wants to hire 'that guy' ever again, and a lot of abuse being targeted his way, what will this achieve?

      If he did something criminal, then he should be charged. If he did something extremely incompetent then maybe membership of the engineering body should be revoked, but it isn't the place of GM to throw their engineers to the wolves.

    2. Re:Hero ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      As a professionally licensed design engineer, we have a responsibility to the public in general. These two engineers, once the problem had been identified and middle management was preventing the fix from being implemented, should have sent an email to the CEO and copied the entire company mailing list highlighting the potential liability and risk of death and great bodily harm. I guarantee it would have been fixed, and a bunch of jackass middle management would have been out on their asses. If the warning was still ignored, the next stop is the press. They may or may not have lost their jobs, or they may have gotten a promotion, but either is far better than where they are now.

      Engineers in general are very conscientious as we have one of very few professions where our work makes us personally liable under the law and that liability cannot be transferred to a corporation (although the corporation may also be liable, and typically have deeper pockets.) This is one reason why, although spectacular (i.e. the Challenger shuttle explosion) it is very rare that middle management succeeds in hushing any serious safety flaws known to the engineers. As an engineer I would much rather be out of a job than on the hook for wrongful death, legally or morally. As for my next employer, if they are worth working for, they know the laws and know that engineers work for them but have a greater responsibility to society.

  2. I used to work at GM. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Specifically, OnStar.

    I can remember one of the development groups there "discovering" Agile, and immediately trying to patent the crap out of every process they could. Specifically, they were patenting how they made "new" processes to make Agile work with their awful SDP-21 development process (waterfall)..... by putting multiple sprints inside of the waterfall.

    The place was soul sucking, conformity was desperately sought in all people, and management was desperate to throw underlings under the bus in order to save their own $160,000/year jobs (the talent for which they never really possessed).

    You know... sort of like what is happening to these two engineers.

  3. changing part without changing number is common by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm not saying that it's good, and this case is an example of exactly why it can be a bad idea to do this, but changing part numbers has a lot of overhead (inventory management of multiple part numbers, all the manuals that now refer to the wrong number, etc)

    If it's expected that the new part is significantly different than the old one, then it's worth all the pain, but if it's not expected to be significantly different (just cheaper to build, or more reliable when nobody expects series reliability problems with the old one, etc) its not completely insane to just change the design and keep the same part number.

    If you want to be really paranoid, you track each batch of parts produced as a separate item, because minor things like the temprature that day could theoretically affect something. In medical and aerospace industries, this sort of tracking is done (which is one of the reasons why 'simple' things are so expensive in those industries)

    but in the automotive industry that level of tracking is just not done, and it's very common for parts to be substatuted with no notice.

    In the computer industry, it's unfortuantly common for some manufacturers to make what many people consider major changes (like changing chipsets) without changing the part number.

    David Lang

    1. Re:changing part without changing number is common by confused+one · · Score: 5, Informative

      Since I work for an automotive OEM.... When this is done, there is an Engineering Change Order documenting the change and why it was implemented. We don't change anything without first getting the approval of the customer; and, invariably they will want all the relevant DV and PV testing redone. Huge effort and pain. All of this is well documented and nothing ships until we have final approval from the customer.

      The part number may not change; but, the part revision level will. PN 123456 RevA will become PN 123456 RevB. We treat it as the "same" part number but will only ship the latest revision once we have customer approval. As for tracking, I don't know how our customers tracks the change internally; but, I can tell you which batch, serial number, and date code the new revision started shipping.