SpaceX Rocket Program Affected by Irresponsible QA Signoffs


I hate to start the blog off on a downer note, but some important lessons here about personal integrity (and personal liability) in the field of QA.

A QA engineer working for a supplier to SpaceX and other DoD suppliers was found to have forged signatures and stamps of inspectors of the parts his company (PMI Industries of Gates, NY) was selling to a number of rocket and missile manufacturers.

In the field of QA, we're often subject to immense pressures from our management chain as well as other managers and directors in the company to "just sign off" on a product or test result.

Once the CFO of a company I was working for cornered me when nobody was around just to let me know that if we didn't ship the product soon, we wouldn't be able to make payroll! Talk about pressure!

I did work harder to complete the factory test fixture I was building, but as the article indicates, if you go too far under pressure and falsify tests, you can open yourself up to personal liability. You can mitigate this problem by communicating clearly up your chain of command, even if it's painful, giving options about what you *can* do, and what support that may help get things moving more quickly.

Please share a story about pressure you've been under to "sign off" on a product, if you have one!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/spacex-rockets-were-imperiled-by-falsified-reports-prosecutors-say-11558576047?mod=hp_listb_pos1

Or a version not behind the WSJ paywall:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/22/spacex-nasa-james-smalley-forged-inspection-reports-rocket-parts/1199009001/




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