Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Leeham News and Analysis
- Boeing unlikely to meet FAA’s 90-day deadline for new safety program April 18, 2024
- Focus on quality not slowing innovation, says GKN April 18, 2024
- Boeing defends 787, 777 against whistleblower charges April 17, 2024
- Dissecting Boeing CEO’s statement next new airplane will cost $50bn April 15, 2024
- Bjorn’s Corner: New engine development. Part 3. Propulsive efficiency April 12, 2024
It’s official–new A350 delay
EADS, parent of Airbus, reported that there will be a three month delay for the A350 EIS due to wing drilling issues. We reported on July 6 we expected a delay of 5-6 months and earlier this week linked to an article suggesting one month. Here is an article synopsizing the information. The Wall Street Journal has this article.
This represents a 15 month delay for the A350 XWB-900 EIS. It’s unclear what, if any, cascading effect this will have on the A350-800 and the A350-1000.
Airbus said the program remains “challenging” and the linked news articles indicate this.
We’re skeptical of all new airplane programs given the recent history at Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier (CRJ1000) and, if you want to add it in, COMAC’s ARJ21 (though this one might be a bit unfair to include with the legacy OEMs). We would not be surprised if the A350 has additional delays between now and EIS.
But one thing we are seeing is that Airbus is coming forward sooner with delay acknowledgements than it did on the A380 and Boeing did on the 787. We have to give Airbus credit for being more forthcoming than in the past.
I agree, Airbus deserves credit for opening the veil a bit. When I have been critical in the past, it is not that programs get delayed. Of course there are delays – they are doing what has not been done before, and any of us who have worked in the industry know that the problem is that you never know what it is that you don’t know. Computer simulations can only go so far because they are based on what you do know. You learn as you go. My problem is when A or B (or C or D or E for that matter) hide problems, and, by the very nature of that culture, leave worms under the copper that only appear when there is a tragedy.
Look at all projects not only in avaiation the last 10 years, they are all late and way over budget. What is it that makes modern people fail this bad every single time we try?! I have been part of many delayed or cancelled projects in the last 10 years. Are we behind in the evolution?
There must be an explanation to all failures?!
Failures? LOL!
No single Large Civilian Airliner (LCA) program from either Airbus or Boeing have been outright failures. IMO, both OEM’s have been remarkably successful in the LCA business. Now, if you are talking about military aerospace projects; that’s a whole different story.
“No single Large Civilian Airliner (LCA) program from either Airbus or Boeing have been outright failures. IMO, both OEM’s have been remarkably successful in the LCA business.”
OV-999, it all depends on your definitions. If “LCA” = twin-aisle and “have been” excludes the still-new A380 and A350 plus the 747-8 and 787, and “success” = more than 500 sales, then let’s see what’s left, Airbus vs Boeing as of June 2012.
According to these criteria, the A330 is the only successful Airbus twin-aisle program to date. Since EIS in 1994 nearly 1,200 A330’s have been delivered with more than 300 on order. That’s more than the combined total of all its out-of-production Airbus predecessors, the A300, A310, A300-600, and all the A340 models.
There were 250 A300 B1’s, B2’s and B4’s, EIS was 1974. The A310 was intended to compete with the original 767-200. EIS was 1983, a year after the 767. There were 255 sales before it went out of production in 1997. Many A310 features, especially the two-crew flight deck and rear fuselage configuration became part of 1983’s A300-600; that model, with 311 deliveries between 1983 and 2007, outsold the A310.
The A330’s four-engine siblings were the A340-200 and -300.
A340-200 28 1993-2008
A340-300 218 1993-2007
Airbus tried to compete with the 777 with the long-range A340-500 (32 sold 2003-2011) and long-body A340-600 (97 sold 2002-2011). Both airplanes had an enlarged wing and four 50,000-lb SLST engines; neither was successful.
Comparable Boeing programs to date are:the out-of-production 747’s: 724 classics (-100’s, SR, -200, -300 and SP) plus 694 747-400’s and the in-production 767 (1,105 ordered, 1,027 delivered) and 777 (1,372 ordered, 1,014 delivered)
These Boeing programs each sold more than 500 airplanes, but some models did not succeed. Among the 747 Classics were the 747-200C convertible (13 airplanes), 747SP (45), 747SR (29) 747-100B (9) and 747-300 (81) The least successful 747-400 was the 910,000 lb 747-400ER, only six sold, all to Qantas.
The least successful 767 was the 767-400 with 37 sales. The least-successful 777 appears to be the 777-200LR, with 54 delivered as of last month.
“Failures” in terms of being late and over budget. I don’t think he was referring to any program outright.
Pdx, that is a valid interpretation. Despite very different histories, Airbus and Boeing have become very parallel duopolies. Each company’s very mature cash cows consist of a successful single-aisle aircraft lineup plus a successful set of twin-aisles. Each has an on-going slow-selling four-engine VLA. Each has all-new big twins still a long way from maturity.
toyuths, a LCA program, based on “my definition”, includes all sub-models; some more successful than others. I thought that was pretty self-explanatory. 😉
Please do note that this was a response to an assertion seemingly claiming that “all aviation projects commenced during the last decade are all failures”.
Now, your 500 sales number required for a sub-model to be successful is, with all due respect, ridiculous. Under that standard, even the 777-200ER is not successful.
BTW, your order and deliveries figures for the A330 are not correct. The total order count for the A332/A332F/A333 stands at about 1200 frames, while total deliveries are just short of 900 units.
pdxlight, the 777-200 R&D program apparently blew the budget by 100 percent, but it did come in on time. Does that mean that the 777 is not successful? 😉
As of now, the A350 has a schedule overrun of about 15 percent. Is a 15 percent schedule overrun a failure?
OV, why’re you asking ME, lol. I was merely stating that I believe his comment was misunderstood.
Personally, no… I don’t consider either of your examples as failures outright. But they did fail to meet budget and/or schedule. That doesn’t mean the programs aren’t a great success overall!
You seem very emotinal on this matter, relax it was a swipe on us all, including myself. I think we have made life too complicated and that we overestimate ourselves constantly.
Nice try, en590swe. However, I’m neither emotional about this nor do I subscribe to the idea that recent LCA programs are late due to your rather simplistic analysis. I would rather guess that the need to comply with ever-more-stringent regulatory requirements in addition to the low-volume, high-complexity, high-cost nature of the LCA business, will more than explain the reasons for why most, if not all, LCA projects launched during the last 12 years, have seen delays and costs escalations.
Tongue in cheek:
It is a software thing.
The definitive work on project derailment is “The Mythical Man-Month”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month
Absolutely worth reading. Originally written in view of computer related
projects today it seems to apply to any big project.
One tentative guess about the underlying reason:
Software works with (multiple) encapsulation in “simple” paradigms.
This wrapping aids in making it useable for less than brilliant people
but it also cloaks the associated underlying complexity.
What is not visible cannot be solved and surface later in projects
as “unknown unknowns” ( what a dumb Rumsfeld phrase, primary objective
of traditional engineering education is putting light to those dark corners
and know what you don’t know.
It’s said the Software of Electro Impact, Seattle !
http://www.electroimpact.com/
Just paint (Drill) the Boeing Logo, on the the first wing sample of the A350 !
May be just a joke !
ElectroImpact never was a “Boeing” Company, more like the reverse:
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20040801&slug=zieve01a
( rather interesting article, actually. )
I read the Wiki article you have referenced Uwe and thought it was very interesting indeed. I have also ordered the book on Amazon.
Thanks, Normand
This article seems to point to it being a data issue:
http://blogs.wsj.com/source/2012/07/27/reasons-behind-the-a350-delay/
“Mr. Evrard said the drilling problems arose because computers that run the drills require extremely detailed information about the location and size of holes, but the data took longer than planned to compile. He said the machines are now running as planned.”
Some time around 1995 the design and production worlds became infected with the PMI/PMBOK virus: the belief that if we just “planned” hard enough, just followed ever more “rigorous” “processes” [1], just filled out more and more tracking spreadsheets and “stoplight charts” we could become as gods and achieve divine perfection in “projects”.
If you read the history of the Manhattan Project, Cook’s book on the 707, Sutter’s account of the 747, the histories of the early electricity, telephone, radio, and computer pioneers, etc you’ll see that the universe and the creation of new projects just doesn’t work that way. We are NOT as gods; we are simply human beings. And product development needs wide leeway for completion dates, redesign, innovation, and adaptive change in general. But the PMI “mature process” view of the universe just doesn’t allow for such messiness – and CxO management has bought into that view 101%. When the irresistible force of Wall Street promises meets the immovable object that is the nature of universe, well…
C.O.
[1] Always best when the word “process” and its variants is spoken in a deep Scots accent.
He.
For the MBA type people engineering, planning, all that , is like a religion. The “handover” point in hierarchies has been lowered in recent decades.
You do the right incantations, do your quarterly absolutions and thus having been a good boy will land in heaven later on.
Here we have to bring A.C.Clarke into this:
“Any sufficiently advanced tech is indistinguishable from magic”.
Then this would point to a capabilities rift in our societies.
While some domains have made vast progress others stayed behind or even fell back. ( This fits in with a resurgence of
atavistic religions like christian fundamentalism loosing ~4000 years of social sophistication on the way )
It is good that Airbus, and hopefully all the OEMs, has finally learned the lessons of past programs. With Airbus and Boeing with thier plates full of new programs, like the A-350, A-320NEO, A-330NG, A-400M, B-787-9/-10, B-737MAX, B-777-8X/-9X, NSA (Y-1?), KC-46, and who knows what next, there are bound to be delays. Indeed the A-350 and B-787-9 current programs are already delayed from thier original EIS. The last airliner programs that I remember that stayed pretty much on schedule was the B-777-200 program, and the follow-on airplanes the remainder of the B-777 family (to date) of the mid 1990s and the B-737NG family program of the late 1990s and the A-340/-330 family programs of the early 1990s.
In my opinion, the A350 and the A380 may have been, or are already late, but
Boeing should not make the mistake that one or the other will be a failure, in
terms of the numbers eventually sold of each type.
As with the 747, the longer it takes before the A380 and especially it’s stretched
version, is the right size a/p to cope with congestion at the major hubs, the more
expensive it will for Boeing or any other manufacturer to build a competitive a/p.
The A350, already having an all carbon-fiber structure and having a wider cabin
compared to the 777, may well force Boeing to build a whole new a/p, rather
than upgrade the existing and extremely well-selling 777!
The A350 has a wider cabin than the 787, not the 777. The A350 is actually closer in size to the 787 than the 777.
Wow that is a surprice being from him, I guess that shows we should not take anything here as gospel..
if the 777 had the perfect cross section, the 787 would have the same.
Both will be mostly 9 abreast on long flights, both have the same containers. 1 is flying around a big empty attic on every flight.
I hope Boeing takes the A350-1000 serious. Not like they dismissed/ downplayed the A300, A320, A330, NEO, A380. “We are happy with where we are, we are in close contact with our customers, Airbus is only catching up, we won’t be pushed, we have time, we will take a carefull decision later this year, early next year”.. Please not again..
marginally OT:
Todays newspaper here shows an article on EADS/Airbus earnings and expectations:: thoroughly positive.
In a sideline Enders is quoted as : A380 ribs may move away from an CFRP/Al composite
and be manufactured completely in Al-?? ( no specific alloy mentioned ).
On models and success in the market:
_All_ Airbus models contributed _significantly_ towards raising Airbus marketshare continuously from 0% to 50+%
Just a Joke Uwe … Electro-impact is “Only” a “Seattle” company !
If I remember well ( pls correct if I’m wrong) first flight of the A380 was pretty much on schedule, as was Certification. EIS was 19 months late.
The big delay (wiring, software) became clear after first flight and the delay was announced shortly after.
Not at all similar to the Boeing 787.
It seems Airbus on the A350 is very much focussed on the ramp up after flight testing. They suggest fixing the first few proto’s to achieve type certification ASAP can bite them later on. E.g slow amp up, writing off all prototypes & a heavy development / certification job on the -800 and -1000.
Very good observation keesje. In recent years, and throughout the industry, much effort was put on accelerating production in order to save money. That might work with the manufacturing of common goods, even cars. But with complex systems like aerospace vehicles this approach cannot work. It actually creates the opposite effect.
The sensitivity of a system to outside disturbance is not in a linear relationship with its level of complexity. As the complexity increases the smallest deviation has an increasingly larger impact on the rest of the system.
Since the majority of contemporary aircraft programs are more complex than they use to be that’s why we have more delays than we use to have.
The B-17 was designed in eleven months and was quickly put in production at a rate of 300 aircraft per month. This was not only due to the circumstances of war, but it was also permitted because of the low level of complexity (as compared to what we have today) of this particular model.
1- Put the maximum effort in the planning phase.
2- Monitor as closely as possible all aspects of the execution phase.
3- Keep everything as simple as possible, but not simpler than is required.
So true … and true for almost any project, not just aerospace.
“So true … and true for almost any project, not just aerospace.”
There is a tidelevel of complexity beyond which you can not fudge compliance anymore.
In this analogy Airbus dipped their feet and Boeing got full immersion.
damn, that didn’t go as planned. text quoted as “keesje” should be “Normand Hamel”,
text quoted as “Normand Hamel” is mine.
Your points are well received C.O.! It’s actually a great post. I am sure your comments will resonate with many readers.
But if I may add some comments about the reason why all those fancy processes don’t always work as they are expected to, I would say it is because they lack a key ingredient: supervision. If we take the Dreamliner as an example, it is obvious that Boeing relied too much on the suppliers and did not adequately supervise them. They have since taken corrective measures but it is an early omission that will have cost them several billions of dollars in the end.
Many observers expect Bombardier to be late on the CSeries. Why would they not be, after all it’s the “norm”!? Well, if there is indeed a delay on the CSeries it should be a small one. The reason I say this is because I know how tight they are on supervision. They constantly review each and every item of the development and manufacturing processes so that if anything comes up they immediately implement a contingency plan. The Chinese fuselage problems is a good example of their disciplined approach.
Supervision is not part of the process, it is a process in itself. More than that, it is a philosophy. It was first adopted by the military a long time ago because for them it is a matter of life or death. If supervision is not integrated into the execution phase the programme cannot succeed even if everything was perfectly planned for. The reasons are that “we are not as gods; we are simply human beings. And product development needs wide leeway for completion dates, redesign, innovation, and adaptive change in general.”
So if we cannot plan for everything, no matter what, then we have to be ready for the inevitable change that will come at any time and at any development phase. And we have to be able to manage that change via the most attentive supervision possible.
By the way, I am in the middle of “The Road to the 707” by William H. Cook. It’s a great book! It was written by an engineer, for engineers or technically minded people. Very down to earth considerations throughout the book. Highly recommended!
For those who may have missed this “The Road to the 707” is the book mentioned by C.O. in his post above, along with others on the 747 and the Manhattan project. By pure coincidence I just started reading it a few days ago. I purchased the book used and if I go by the written notes on the inside cover, the previous owner has read it three times within a four month period! Cook had a distinguished career at Boeing as an aerodynamicist. He died last April at age 98.
I’m fairly sure I first saw a reference to “The Road to the 707” in a discussion here on leehamnews, which lead me to track down a copy via alibris.com Great book and well worth paying the price to obtain for anyone interested in airplane design, the airliner business, and/or engineering management.
C.O.
“If we take the Dreamliner as an example, it is obvious that Boeing relied too much on the suppliers and did not adequately supervise them.”
My guess is that Boeing management thought to have that covered in contracts.
Unfortunately you can not write “trust” into contracts.
For trust you need not only a competent partner you also need
competence and understanding of processes on your own side.
( for managements a deaf / mute communications problem imho ).
Inside Boeing this seems to be shortcircuited and thus not apparent to management.
Trust = Mismanagement
Supervision = Mastery
Known unknowns are the dark corners you illuminate. The point of unknown unknowns is that you don’t know that the corners are dark, or even that the corners exist.
.. and that is what you have preparatory research and proof of concept stuff for.
In contrast all the “unknown unknowns” shoved to center stage
to excuse recent hickups were invariably things more knowledgeable
others had warned about: i.e. caused by lax research and/or ignoring known issues.
There is a deep truth underneath what you say here Uwe.
The “unknowns” are more often than not the “unacknowledged”. In other words the potential issues might have been brought up earlier but were unacknowledged at the time. Or some people might simply have been afraid to bring potential issues to the attention of the project leader (or dictator).
And when things start to pile up the early warnings are unacknowledged for a second time and the issues are simply misidentified as “unknowns”, as in “we could not have predicted this, it was out of our control”. Instead of saying “we did not listen to so and so when she/he tried to bring it to our attention”.
Not quite sure if that goes in the right interpretive direction.
Trust is not blind trust ( as in religious truth or dogma )
Trust is mutual understanding of capabilities and
the lack of exploitation of eventual misses.
“Two pulling in the same direction, if one stumbles the other will help”
( profit orientation (seems to?) asks for exploitation of those misses for shortterm advantage )
Supervision is an _investment_ and can be one way to fit trust into capitalism.
Only Boeing was hellbent on minimal investment for maximum profits
but only swapped out investment ( worth something in the long run ) for
extra cost that are not complemented by worthwhile achievements.
It is a notable difference if for one engineers of two departments talk to each other to fix some issue or this issue is condensed into documents that travel up the ladder, cross the corporate information void and then travel down elsewhere. Lots of noise introduced and transinformation reduced significantly.
Lastly in problem solving there is a Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle like effect that limits
the product of solution and attribution.
i.e. You can either solve a problem with good result or effect polarising blaim attribution.
The special case with the 787 was that Boeing obviously didn’t follow any of the industrial best-practice recommendations, which suggests that new products should use existing processes and tools, the existing organisation and demonstrated technologies. That, in addition to a highly unrealistic planned development and testing phase lasting just 4 years from the get go in April 2004 to EIS in May 2008, is IMO the main reason for the 85 percent EIS-schedule overrun and untold billions in cost-escalations.
This doesn’t mean that the whole 787 program is in itself an outright failure; for it, of course, isn’t. However, what developing the 787 IMO did to Boeing, was to transform a company seemingly hell-bent on winning over Airbus big time with the Y1, Y2 and Y3, to a company which have lent themselves to being reactive to the neo and the A350-900/1000. In that sense, from Boeing’s point of view, the costs associated with developing the 787 may have led to a strategic failure, but not a tactical one.
What struck me early on with the 787 program is how Boeing wanted to implement so many new things all at the same time. And on top of that they wanted to do everything in record times.
Another problem with Boeing, which had already started before the 787, is outsourcing. They wanted to be strictly airplane integrators. It’s the same managerial trend with airlines which are trying to outsource everything in order to concentrate on selling airplane tickets. The danger with this approach is to become an empty shell, with limited in-house expertise.
In a recent past the buzz word was diversification. Today it is outsourcing. There is no more wisdom in outsourcing than there was in diversification. And just like most corporations have since abandoned diversification in order to concentrate on what they know best, they will eventually also abandon outsourcing in order to preserve what they know best.
Boeing bet their reputation in a valiant act of bluffing their way back to the breadbaskets.
.. and lost standing in all aspects _and_ with significant pileon effects due to the bluff being so successfull initially.
The Dreamliner was overpromised in performance and deliveriy projections.
It will take significant more time to mature in performance and deliveries.
cost overruns exceed the 777 project by a juicy margin,
time overruns are top of the industry too.
Loss of reputation frustrated the similar NSA gambit.
In contrast:
How would the market situation appear (today, future ) if Boeing had gone the Realistic Way?
An A380 hugging large twin?
Trust and Supervision are not opposites.
My father trusted me to be able to ride a bike (more than I trusted myself) – but he still supervised my learning process.
When you trust the supervisor you generally don’t mind the supervision. the 787 was a failure by both parties. Boeing should have been more involved with their supplier, and their supplier should have requested (demanded?) more involvement.
It’s just the question of who should pay for it that messes things up. underfunded middle management who calculate and see that if the issue escalates to lawyer level, the costs are off their dashboard.
When Bombardier gave the contract to Alenia to design and manufacture the vertical and horizontal stabilizers for the CSeries they trusted them that they could do the job. They chose Alenia because of their expertise. In other words they were confident in Alenia’s ability to produce those vital parts.
But that did not prevent them, as it unfortunately did for Boeing, to dispatch a team of technical representatives in Foggia in order to supervise the development of the parts.
If you only trust, like Boeing did, it is mismanagement of the first order. But if you also supervise, like Bombardier does, it is indicative of a high degree of mastery.
I am not quite sure if the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle would have much of an effect at that scale… When it comes to managing large aerospace projects I much preferI to apply the Fourth Law of Thermodynamics:
If anything can go wrong, it will.
That’s why I put so much emphasis on systematic, and systemic, supervision. It’s the best way to ensure that potential issues are addressed quickly.
Mr. Heisenberg and Mr. Murphy seem to have been close friends 😉
Having a defined unsimple enough model with understood inner workings is mandatory.
Not (wanting to?) understanding your own working was causal for Boeing’s pitfall.
As a lean manufacturing fellow I admire Airbus CEO statement, that he wouldn’t allow migration of unfinished work.
This is the right way to do things.
No, I don’t mean to put less emphasis on the engineering phase. Engineering is the basis from where you start. If you don’t have a sensible design to start with, your project is a stillborn.
But this has nothing to do with what I was trying to convey. I was not talking about creating a design, but about managing its implementation. In regards to the production phase I said “monitor as closely as possible all aspects of the execution phase”. I don’t see how that would imply “to put less emphasis on the production phase”.
That being said, you could still have problems with a design after it has been frozen. A good process should be able to address that kind of issue. Or any other category of issues. The reality of this world is such that even if you start with a perfect design, followed with perfect planning, you can still have unanticipated problems. Unknowns. That is the main reason why supervision is so important. But most people, I mean the vast majority of people, don’t really know what proper supervision implies. It has nothing to do with bean counters. Although the financial aspect should also come under the scrutiny of supervision.
Think of supervision as Super Vision. Big Brother. Nothing should escape its glance. The most effective supervisory process takes nothing for granted and leaves nothing, or no one, to itself. And all that effort is driven by time. Money drives this world, and time is money. They are synonymous. In production you have to manage your time if you want to control your budget. Supervision ensures that you know where you are in time, at all times and all the time.
Supervision works hand in hand with contingency. You cannot have the former without the latter. First you have to be able to identify the problems in a timely manner. I mean in a TIMELY MANNER. To achieve that you need a rigorous process. I mean RIGOROUS PROCESS. And once you have properly identified a problem, you also have to correct it in a timely manner. You need an effective contingency plan. And obviously you must prepare for that.
It is similar to flying an aircraft. What do you do if the main hydraulic system fails? What do you do if the airport where you are scheduled to land is now closed because of a sudden change in the weather? What do you do if your brakes fail? A good pilot is first and foremost a good supervisor. A great pilot has a super vision.
A good aircraft designer will build redundancy in the aircraft so that if something unexpected crops up the pilot will be able to react intelligently. And a great aircraft designer will KISS the design of the aircraft. It is imperative that the design be kept as simple as possible. But not simpler than it needs to be. The same goes with the whole project itself. Simplicity is de rigueur everywhere: in conception, in planning, as well as in execution. It’s the best way to prevent problems from happening in the first place.
Because the unexpected should always be expected, supervision is preparing for and managing the unexpected. Like any pilot, the manager has to be ready to react quickly. With proper supervision a good project will fly. 🙂
Sorry, I may have misinterpreted your post. I thought you were writing in relation to the a350 delay – quickly rereading your post I don’t think that was an unreasonable leap of imagination.
I will say that maximum is not a relative term, it is an absolute. there are different levels of effort you can associate to different phases or activities in a program and assigning maximum to one of those means the others are not at at maximum.
on your new post I can only say: Hear, Hear.
To often do I run into leads/managers/chiefs or others in above ground positions in the org tree who think supervision is synonymous to micromanagement. I have been asked to provide daily updates on tasks that run for months; I have had new tasks presented to me on a weekly basis, before there was a chance of finishing the last one.
IMO supervision has more to do with listening, learning and supporting than with dictating, teaching and planning,
That’s exactly what I had in mind when talking about supervision. You are right, it can be extremely annoying if not properly implemented. The reason why so many processes have failed in the past is more related to the way they are implemented than the processes themselves.
It’s like applying the law with no consideration for the spirit of the law. When justice is conducted this way it can become quickly annoying and do more harm than good. It’s the same with processes. The idea (or spirit) is that every element of a project has to be supervised as often as practical in order to ensure that nothing falls behind. It’s a simple idea. But it is extremely difficult to implement because each element can have a different pace and timescale.
A supple structure has to be put in place at the start of a project and should incorporate minor as well as major milestones. As soon as a deviation is identified the reaction time should be immediate and corrective measures should be implemented right away. The idea is that nothing should be left to drift for too long. That’s when the contingency plans come into play.
In the cockpit of an airplane there are many basic functions that can be put on “alternate mode” when something goes wrong. But unfortunately many projects are launched without built-in “alternate modes”.
That’s definitely not what I had in mind when discussing supervision. What you are talking about here is leadership. Supervision and leadership are like the two parts of a brain. Supervision is the left brain. Its mode of operation is reasoning and it produces cold analysis. Leadership is the right brain. Its mode of operation is intuition and its job is to listen, to nurture and to inspire.
Most managers favour one part of the brain over the other. Great managers have both brains equally developed and use one or the other in harmony with the situation.