https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/business/boeing-737-max-crash.html
Wonderful read.
His internal assembly designs for the Max, he said, still include omissions today, like not specifying which tools to use to install a certain wire, a situation that could lead to a faulty connection. Normally such blueprints include intricate instructions.
“Any designs we created could not drive any new training that required a simulator,” Mr. Ludtke said. “That was a first.”
When upgrading the cockpit with a digital display, he said, his team wanted to redesign the layout of information to give pilots more data that were easier to read. But that might have required new pilot training.
So instead, they simply recreated the decades-old gauges on the screen. “We just went from an analog presentation to a digital presentation,” Mr. Ludtke said. “There was so much opportunity to make big jumps, but the training differences held us back.”
“This program was a much more intense pressure cooker than I’ve ever been in,” he added. “The company was trying to avoid costs and trying to contain the level of change.
They wanted the minimum change to simplify the training differences, minimum change to reduce costs, and to get it done quickly.”