You are the engineering manager for Acme Assembly, which designs, fabricates, and assembles machinery. You have...

 

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You are the engineering manager for Acme Assembly, which designs, fabricates, and assembles machinery. You have received a contract to construct twenty gearboxes that have been designed by Delta Designs, a company that sometimes competes with Acme. However, Delta is extremely busy and does not have the capacity for this work at the present time. One of your engineers notices that the sizes of shafts and gears on the drawings seem rather small for the torque and power ratings of the gearboxes; rough calculations seem to confirm that assessment. You call the chief engineer at Delta, who tells you he is too busy to double-check the drawings. He has full confidence in his designers and says you should get on with the job. He points out that you are employed in this contract as the fabricator, not as the designer, and should not be reviewing his work. QUESTION Do you have an ethical obligation to continue to pursue this apparent discrepancy? Would it make any difference if failure of the gearboxes could result in injury or death rather than just financial loss? You are the engineering manager for Acme Assembly, which designs, fabricates, and assembles machinery. You have received a contract to construct twenty gearboxes that have been designed by Delta Designs, a company that sometimes competes with Acme. However, Delta is extremely busy and does not have the capacity for this work at the present time. One of your engineers notices that the sizes of shafts and gears on the drawings seem rather small for the torque and power ratings of the gearboxes; rough calculations seem to confirm that assessment. You call the chief engineer at Delta, who tells you he is too busy to double-check the drawings. He has full confidence in his designers and says you should get on with the job. He points out that you are employed in this contract as the fabricator, not as the designer, and should not be reviewing his work. QUESTION Do you have an ethical obligation to continue to pursue this apparent discrepancy? Would it make any difference if failure of the gearboxes could result in injury or death rather than just financial loss?

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

Yes the engineering manager has an ethical obligation to continue to pursue the discrepancy in order ... View the full answer