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Cautionary tale -- crane repair parts supplier

Bottom line here is the crane company's greed aided and abetted by the persistent lack of ethics on the part of the buyer and Chinese supplier.
 
News flash...
Greed caused capital to kill labor.

Negative.

Incompetance on the part of the guy procuring the turn-table, coupled with lack of oversight by someone with the skills to determine engineering specs killed someone. These individuals are at fault. There's nothing greedy about finding the most competitive price for something you're trying to buy, as long as you do the due diligence to make sure it is up to the task.

How you can turn this into an indictment of capitalism seems symptomatic of some form of phycosis.
 
If there were no greed then the boss would have paid for the expensive and correct parts.
Greed is what caused the underling to shop for the cheaper part.
 
Business as usual with most of those countries, china ain't the only one and companies cutting corners to save a dollar is nothing new. Sad for all the people who get injured and killed each year because of it. I'm not sure that its really a crime to search a cheaper source, everyone is doing it. So what if its a crane part or a toaster or crappy chinese light fixture that burns down your house with you in it, result is the same, someone dies, business as usual...
 
Agree that this is not an economic model problem unless you somehow link the performance of the economic model with the nominal ethic of the participants. And if that is the case - all economic models are screwed.

Nothing wrong with seeking the best value - but when you don't have the means to evaluate the finished product (i.e. you don't know jack about welding and don't want to pay for a proper inspection because engineers / inspectors with this kind of expertise are too expensive) . . . you are putting your own schedule / budget priorities in line before the safety of the equipment and operators / bystanders.

In light of SND's comments, I amend my earlier comment to
Bottom line here is the crane company's greed aided and abetted by the persistent lack of competence and ethics on the part of the buyer and Chinese supplier
 
The oem part was seen as defective by inspecter.

Howeaver it never failed.

Why didnt inspecter find the new part as defective?

Seems to me that it was caused by faulty inspection.
 
After seeing what Mr. Varganyi called his hand-drawn “cartoons” of the large bearing, Mr. Wang wrote back expressing doubts that her company could handle a weld that played a role in holding the turntable atop the crane tower. She did not let on that some other company would actually be doing the welding.
“Just discussed with our general engineer,” she wrote, adding that the last time her company did a similar bearing it had not done the weld “because in the crane it is a very important part, and we are afraid the weld technic we had is not good, because normally we didn’t do that.” The e-mail continued, “And honest speaking we don’t have confidence on this welding.”


Mr. Varganyi sent Ms. Wang several pages of welding instructions he had from an American supplier. Ms. Wang wrote back that “we fully understand your meaning on this.”


The supplier indicated that they were not happy to do the work. Rather than take the offered way out of the contract, the customer responded in a way that the supplier would interpret to mean "we don't care whether you think you can do it well. Do it anyway".

If you deal with people of a Confucian mindset you must deal with them in a way that they understand. Don't assume that they will embarrass you by refusing to do work that you obviously want them to.
 
I wonder if the investigation would have gone as far(or anywhere) if the crane had fallen in a less known empty area so that it hadn't damaged surrounding buildings or blocked NYC traffic, but still had killed the 2 guys.

Quote from the article: " The civil cases in which Ms. Wang’s affidavit were filed were brought by the families of the two men who died. Those cases have been on hold pending the outcome of the criminal trial in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. "


Kinda sounds like the family of the 2 guys who died are last on the list, everyone else will get paid first eh?
 
So as a purchaser, I should just take it up the ass and go with the most expensive bid I'm given? It scares me that you don't see how asinine this is.

that said, this varganyi guy didn't have enough competence to write a solid purchase spec, nor the inspection expertise to catch a dangerous condition. It wasn't greed, it was a perfect storm of systematic problems and two idiots finding eachother.

Hell, the american companies probably realized this guy had no idea what he was talking about, therefore they didn't know what exactly they were bidding on and likely padded the hell out of thier bids.

MotionGuru said it well,
 
No, I'd think the family cases are on hold pending the outcome of the criminal case because they will then be able to use whatever evidence the criminal investigation reveals, rather than pay to discover it themselves. The men are dead, and the cases filed so as not to run afoul of the statute of limitations, so there is no hurry.

I question the fact that the parts were able to pass inspection without any certificate of origin, UL approval, whatever. The old parts that were condemned by inspection were most likely due to wear. The new part likely failed catastrophically at a weld, a weld that likely looked beautiful, but had insufficient penetration. I have seen perfect examples of this on Chinese welds (funny story, but not here)... the only way to insure against it is to know that the welding procedure, materials, and skill of the welder were all certified; also some non-destructive testing could be in order for a mission critical component such as this.

But, this was Noo Yark, and sometimes a "gratuity" to the proper person can have amazing results. It will be interesting to see what shakes out.

Dennis
 
Negative.

Incompetance on the part of the guy procuring the turn-table, coupled with lack of oversight by someone with the skills to determine engineering specs killed someone. These individuals are at fault. There's nothing greedy about finding the most competitive price for something you're trying to buy, as long as you do the due diligence to make sure it is up to the task.

How you can turn this into an indictment of capitalism seems symptomatic of some form of phycosis.

+1 for psychosis.
 
Quote from the article: " The civil cases in which Ms. Wang’s affidavit were filed were brought by the families of the two men who died. Those cases have been on hold pending the outcome of the criminal trial in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. "


Kinda sounds like the family of the 2 guys who died are last on the list, everyone else will get paid first eh?

Waiting is normal, and is most likely asked for by the plaintiff's lawyers. If the defendants are found criminally guilty, it's more of a slam dunk to find them negligent and financially liable as well.
 
I guess it is the US. around here lawsuits seem to go a little different.

It's pretty scary the amount of faith people put in a website in general.

I find it kind of surprising that given the amount of junk being made everywhere and imported, all the cost cutting, the botched jobs, flaws being hidden, half ass engineering and so on, that there isn't a whole lot more cases similar to this. There's gotta be a lot of failures just getting chucked to experience or oops we tried and it bit us in the ass but lets keep quiet.
I'm sure we've all seen some pretty shoddy stuff and probably even been asked to make it so...
 
Reminds me a little about listening to a former coworker talk about spending 6 months in the "Chinese Bomb factory" I can't recall but I want to say it was Bejing Boiler works. At any rate he worked for an employer was at least smart enough to send a qualified welding engineer over there to witness the work getting done but he said when it comes to "Code" welding in China the "Code" is only as good as the customer is at enforcing it. He said the actual welds that the welders did were for the most part beautiful, but the real issues came to things that one couldn't see. If you didn't witness all the heat treatments, and NDE called out in the contract it often didn't get done:eek:.
 
If the original part need welding to get a union welder to weld on a crane in new york city would be virtually impossible.

There is no way a non union welder would be allowed to do it.

I was involved in getting some parts that where installed repaired (2 hour job max) a welder was sent from here he spent 6 months of and on getting parts fixed (for con eddison). He never was allowed to weld.

I dought company cared who fixed the crane just the chinese company where the first that where dumb enough to try.

Also try sourceing a rolling element bearing that is not made in china
 
I have all my parts welded by a certified welder and just the other day I was in his shop and a crane part came in from the mines that needed to be welded, it looked like an easy fix but my friend asked lots of questions then called the head office and laid into them for even trying to fix something like this. He basically said that he wont ever weld things like this and that they shouldnt either unless they want to be sued into bankruptcy.
 
Miguels224 - you make a good point - and I think you need to dig a little deeper to understand that greed is completely unrelated to capitalism as it is marksism, communism, (pick your socioeconomic paradigm of the day) . . .

Give this a read . . . Getting Rid of Greed: Choosing Principle over Profit

It doesn't have to be a choice between principles or profits. You can have both if you maintain a proper perspective regarding money and the value of your ethical principles. Your goal should not be to simply avoid greed but to stand by your core values despite the cost. Now, what's that worth?
 








 
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