The emergent order of industrial mobilization during WWII
In January 1941 defense spending rose to triple what it had been during the previous six months. By July it quintupled, and December it jumped […]
History
The downside of industrial management controls
Litton Industries became the first conglomerate to preach the gospel of management controls. Lacking either the experience or training to evaluate the performance of so […]
The effect of the “weapon systems” concept on the defense supplier base
In 1955, for example, Fortune magazine reported that United Aircraft dealt directly with as many as 7,000 subcontractors and suppliers and North American with 10,000. […]
JK Galbraith and getting the wrong answers to all the right questions
I have argued that with industrial development — with advanced technology, high organization, large and rigid commitments of capital — power tends to pass to […]
The birth of automated targeting and the modern computer
We’ve been wrestling with information as a medium for negative feedback ever since Norbert Wiener published Cybernetics in 1949, and Wiener himself had been thinking […]
Government in-house talent and the Bell Report of 1962
[Budget Director David Bell’s] report of April 1962 recommended continuing a heavy reliance on private contractors. The government, however, needed enough in-house competence so that […]
Appropriations, reprogramming, and the origins of Congressional control
Congress controls the movement of funds between program elements, such as between two space development programs (say, GPS Space Segment and GPS Follow on). For […]
Should R&D and Procurement be separated or paired together?
Basically research and procurement are incompatible. New developments are upsetting to procurement standards and procurement schedules. A procurement group is under the constant urge to […]
Is the cost of change astronomical before a piece of metal is bent?
The reason that far too little… flexibility is purchased—aside from a development philosophy which results in large technical as well as financial commitments very early […]
You can’t place a price on an unknown
Cost estimating for development programs has apparently been too widely credited in the Defense Department, in industry, in the Congress, and by the public with […]
Systems engineering isn’t a substitute for talent and capability
I believe that the fundamental difficulty is that we have all gotten so entranced with the technique that we think entirely in terms of procedures, […]
Why the military accepts delivery of deficient systems
Here’s a quote from Henry Durham, a former production manager at Marietta George for Lockheed. He reported: When planes arrive at the flight line of […]
Was Eisenhower’s military-industrial speech a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Eisenhower was going to call this new animal the “military-industrial-congressional complex,” which most would agree today is a pretty accurate description of the system since […]
There’s no free lunch in DoD organizational design
When Burke became chief of naval operations, the conflict between the Bureau of Ordnance and the Bureau of Aeronautics in the guided missile field, under […]
How the US auto industry scaled and improved Army tanks in WWII
One of the first things he [Bill Knudsen] does in the process, he makes a call in the summer of 1940 to his pal KT […]