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| Have you been told to keep quiet about a circuit fault? |
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| Faringdon:
Some years ago I started work in a company who were shipping a product which contained an SMPS which would charge up its vout to a certain voltage within 1 second. This was a necessary spec’d selling point. I was required to do some work on the product, checking its Test report for a start. However, the SMPS in it was “open loop”, and the tolerance of the current limit they were relying upon within the controller might sometimes mean it taking 1.4 seconds to charge up…depending on chip-batch tolerance. However, such loosely toleranced parts had never, so far, entered any production batch. I put forward a very minor mod that would solve the issue, but was told no. They didn’t want a change, as it would be like an admission of having made an error. I was told to just keep schtum….that the wide tolerance parts would never come into production, and even if they did, it would not be my issue. Has this happened to you? You find a fault. On a board you have been working on..and so may be deemed an “involved party”. You request a solving mod…No is the reply (from your immediate boss, not the company owner) …what did you then do? |
| ataradov:
I guessed OP by the topic title. Did not read the fictional story in the post. There is more to life than SMPSs. |
| Kim Christensen:
Yup... This was one company's early days of manufacturing P25 mountain top radio modules when I worked in the system configuration dept. I discovered that the receiver modules had a glitch where if the carrier rapidly came and went (picket fencing) then the system would lock up due to a firmware bug. Only way to recover was to cycle the power. Told my direct supervisor who raised it up the chain where it was ignored. I raised it again with our QC department and engineering dept. who were also told by upper management that meeting the shipping date was more important. I demo'd the fault and it was poo-poo'd as, "That's never going to happen in the field". Yea, we had a lot of returns and pissed off customers especially those who had to helicopter to swap out modules over the following months. |
| coppercone2:
of course not that never happens it never ever happens in the field. you should know that. the field is a nice relaxing green place where you frolic around without shoes. What we are really interested in testing is our customer service department. Please don't bother us with these demonstrations anymore. |
| coppercone2:
this thread is general and has no purpose in being assaulted because its a place to share stories and jokes regardless of the creator the post by kim already justified this thread. its very valuable information unless you are worried the drones might rebel. also anything that can improve the engineering ethics of treez is good for society. |
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