Airbus: A400M – Not Uncommon Issues by Jayesh Mehta
I don’t want to sit here and pick on Airbus, but their timing was bad, and here they are. For two years, Airbus has had to pull out of flight displays at the Farnborough Airshow. To me, this shows the lack of confidence that it can perform adequately. Yet, they feel they will still be able to deliver an order at the end of the year toFrance. I hope they can. Many companies out there will promise the world to their customers and then deliver them a big steaming pile. After that, they “fix” the problems with band-aids and more promises. Sometimes this works. Sometimes it only works for a while. There are ways to prevent this, and save valuable time and resources in the future. I am surprised that more companies don’t follow this. Test your product out beforehand, and not just under one scenario, but many. I know time may be a factor. The business may have promised a certain date, and for various reasons, you may be up against a deadline. It’s worth paying OT to test all night, for a few nights/weeks/months, rather than trying to fix it after the fact (possibly pushing future products/projects back, or wasting resources that could be used on the future product/project). It’s called planning, and holding all departments accountable for their personal deadlines. If you let one department slack off, and miss their deadline, it can push the other departments past theirs, and ultimately, shortcuts will be taken, and problems will arise. If that isn’t bad enough, think about the customer. They’re going to unhappy and pissed, at the best. They also won’t help with one of the biggest marketing tools: word of mouth.
Jayesh.
