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Aviation History
1973
1973 - 2794.PDF
J :«s;r* : •j?*'-<«*%s . • «• •«, . „: The new Rolls-Royce and the old The leading article in this issue discusses the way in which Rolls-Royce (1971) is being reorganised. Here J. M. RAMSDEN adds a post script to HM Government's inquiry into the old Rolls-Royce, identifying some of the lessons for industry and technology in general. THERE has probably never been an industrial cata clysm as great as that which bankrupted the old Rolls-Royce company. Many people at the time felt that something which stood for the best of Britain had been irreparably damaged. Yet within three years the en gine which caused the crash, the RB.21'1, is doing all that its sponsors originally expected of it. Today nearly 300 have been delivered. The chief customer-sponsor, Mr Daniel Haughton of Lockheed, said this month in London, in the context of wide-body airliners: "I believe that this is the greatest engine and I believe it will be in production until the end of the century.'' The story of the Rolls-Royce disaster was told in full in an inch-thick, 2a2lb, 435-page (including 15 appendices) document published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office last August.* It was reviewed in Flight for August 9, 1973. The following week, in a leading article, we likened it to an accident report, the conclusion of which was pilot error. This was, we thought, an over-simplification. The whole national management, and particularly the way the Government handles advanced technology, had contributed to a systems failure. Others should share the responsibility, including com petent civil servants who were in full possession of the facts and the past history of cost estimates. Two men were blamed: Sir Denning Pearson and Sir David Huddie, respectively chairman and chief executive and managing director of the old Rolls-Royce. Their com ments on the report are on page 822, together with those *Holls-Royce Limited. Investigations under Section 165 (a) (i) of the Companies Act 1948. Report by R. A. MacCrindle, QC, and P. Godfrey, FCA. Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London, £5. of the Minister for Aerospace at the time, the Rt Hon Sir Frederick Corfield, QC. These comments are in response to invitations from Flight. Accident reports are never much good if they conclude only with blame. The RB.211 report is as full of useful lessons as a good management course. It takes a long time to read, and longer to think about. Parts of it need reading twice, for the technical and financial complexities are considerable. If a manager can handle problems of RB.211 dimensions he can probably manage anything. Lesson 1 The board as a meant; of safeguarding the interests of a company and its shareholders—public and private—may not be as influential as its members or their nominators may think. The minutes of the old Rolls-Royce board did not even record the signing of the fateful RB.211 contract with Lock heed (para 541). More astonishing is the discovery that Mr Metcalfe, the RB.211 programme director, presented a report to the board in June 1969 "estimating that the RB.211-22 project, over its whole life, would lose £16-3 million—an adverse swing of £63-2 million." The report finds that "an alarming number of main board directors (including, according to his own testimony, Sir Denning Pearson, himself) was not conscious of the exis tence of the Metcalfe report until1 after the receiver was appointed over a year and a half later." As another director, unnamed, said: Why didn't some- Rolls-Royce Derby and the RB.211 engine were fated to write industrial history but, as this article records, the technical task was professionally done
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