General > General Technical Chat
SMPS Sub-circuit is faulty
Faringdon:
Hi,
Please, this post is not political, but I write it as my friend, an EE, is in much distress…Please offer your advice?...
My friend is working in a company doing military work for the UK, and they are based in North of UK. The military work, is mainly a “show off” , token operation, kind of, to “show the main customers that they know their stuff” when it comes to power supplys….then these customers are more likely to place huge, lucrative orders for the Chinese Power supplies which the company “Middle-man’s” in from China.
This post is not to knock the Chinese, who are absolutely honorable, decent, and hard working people, indeed, who are in some ways, taken advantage of, in respect of their hard work, if anything…
Anyway, my friend was designing an SMPS for the military operation section. There was a very significant sub-circuit that he was designing…there were multiple ways of doing it, so he was taking time to consider all the different ways. When his boss heard he was held up like this, the boss then sent him a schem of a presumably_currently_in_service military power supply…to demo how that sub-circuit had been implemented there. ….
My friend examined the sub-circuit, and noticed that it had a very serious fault, and that in fact, this sub-circuit would simply not work…..under certain circumstances, this sub-circuit may result in serious product failure.
Of course, My friend cannot be absolutely completely certain that this faulty circuitry actually exists in currently operational miltary power supplies…..but is worried in case it does. He just gets stone-walled whenever he asks about it.
My friend was also involved in other military SMPS designs, for military customers....and was invited to "delay the reporting of faults" in military SMPS circuits being developed...presumably to avoid the military customers from withdrawing finances. I say these were military designs.....my friend of course is too low down to really know...but the customers were indeed actual known military_work companies.
When my friend made the faults known to his boss...he was told.... "i am not sure at what point we tell them about this....."...and things like....."they are our partners", etc etc.
With another SMPS design for a military customer, the company had been given a spec for a “115VAC” input SMPS…..the company had failed to deliver this for a year….then my friend was given the design to do, and to do it quickly…..my friend requested permission to speak to the customer about “115VAC input” in the spec…...eg whether it means “100-140VAC”, “85-130VAC”, or whatever…..
Anyway, on asking the boss to speak to the customer about this…the boss, got up, and stormed out of the room, saying, “we cant ask them questions about the spec now…they gave us that spec over a year ago…”
…anyway…..this one was averted in some ways, since the operations director later picked up on it, and did indeed arrange for the customer to divulge the full VAC input.
The military developments, may of course, simply have been "pure development exercises" only...who knows.
What should he do?.
MK14:
--- Quote from: Faringdon on June 10, 2023, 11:35:52 am ---Hi,
Please, this post is not political, but I write it as my friend, an EE, is in much distress…Please offer your advice?...
My friend is working in a company doing military work for the UK, and they are based in North of UK. The military work, is mainly a “show off” , token operation, kind of, to “show the main customers that they know their stuff” when it comes to power supplys….then these customers are more likely to place huge, lucrative orders for the Chinese Power supplies which the company “Middle-man’s” in from China.
This post is not to knock the Chinese, who are absolutely honorable, decent, and hard working people, indeed, who are in some ways, taken advantage of, in respect of their hard work, if anything…
Anyway, my friend was designing an SMPS for the military operation section. There was a very significant sub-circuit that he was designing…there were multiple ways of doing it, so he was taking time to consider all the different ways. When his boss heard he was held up like this, the boss then sent him a schem of a presumably_currently_in_service military power supply…to demo how that sub-circuit had been implemented there. ….
My friend examined the sub-circuit, and noticed that it had a very serious fault, and that in fact, this sub-circuit would simply not work…..under certain circumstances, this sub-circuit may result in serious product failure.
Of course, My friend cannot be absolutely completely certain that this faulty circuitry actually exists in currently operational miltary power supplies…..but is worried in case it does. He just gets stone-walled whenever he asks about it.
My friend was also involved in other military SMPS designs, for military customers....and was invited to "delay the reporting of faults" in military SMPS circuits being developed...presumably to avoid the military customers from withdrawing finances. I say these were military designs.....my friend of course is too low down to really know...but the customers were indeed actual known military_work companies.
What should he do?.
--- End quote ---
Quoted, in case they try and hide the evidence of the original post.
Faringdon:
Thanks, ripping off the military is common...i used to work for a co that audited product designs, to check that military contractors hadnt overcharged....but its worrying now, specially when we are involved in a war which may very well suck us much further in.
--- Quote ---Quoted, in case they try and hide the evidence of the original post.
--- End quote ---
Thanks, since you brought this up i feel obliged to respond to your copy/paste......... so, i wonder how serious an issue that you think that this is(?), compared to other things that are openly happening...for example, the outsourcing of virtually all SMPS design and manufacture to the Far East, ...this has a massively deleterious impact on the military capability of the UK's defence industry, but nobody does anything about that.
...so thanks for the copy/paste...but really, how far down the scale_of_danger the situation of the top post is?, in relation to the massive disaster that's already happened on this front....as just described here.
SMPS design and manufacture skills are massively important in sustaining todays, highly electronics based, , military equipment.....and yet we've hived all that skill over to the Far East.
Psi:
This is why working for the military is problematic, there are so many ethical dilemmas.
Question: Is it more ethical to try and get the fault fixed, or is it more ethical to not fix it.
Answer: It's unknowable, because it's not possible to know who will ultimately end up using the products and on which side of a conflict it will be used, and what the conflict will be about.
There are of course some exceptions. Military medical tech used to save lives for example. You can obviously be pretty certain that fixing the issue is ethical and not fixing it is unethical. etc..
ebastler:
--- Quote from: Faringdon on June 10, 2023, 11:35:52 am ---The military work, is mainly a “show off” , token operation, kind of, to “show the main customers that they know their stuff” when it comes to power supplys….then these customers are more likely to place huge, lucrative orders for the Chinese Power supplies which the company “Middle-man’s” in from China.
This post is not to knock the Chinese, who are absolutely honorable, decent, and hard working people, indeed, who are in some ways, taken advantage of, in respect of their hard work, if anything…
--- End quote ---
The way I understand your actual question, it has nothing to do at all with that company's China import business. Your question is how your friend should deal with a design flaw he has found in an existing military product of his company, right? And since the company's military products are designed locally, this flaw has nothing to do with the Chinese power supplies they sell to other markets, if I got you right.
If my understanding is correct -- why did you mention the China import side of the business at all? It merely serves as a distraction then. And given how many times you have obsessed over middle-man or storefront businesses reselling Chinese imported power supplies, including schemes to set up your own company along those lines, it undermines credibility of your post.
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