Destruction of Death Star Was A Manufacturer’s Defect

Going out on a limb here….but could the destruction of the death star have been easily prevented?  I mean it’s been mentioned ad nauseum that the exploitation of such an obvious weakness by the rebel alliance could have been prevented.  In fact, it has been suggested that the ending was straight out of a video game… “use weapon here.”

But, given the scale of the project, could it have been prevented with better suppliers? Was it really just shoddy work on the supplier and builders’ part? Perhaps the original bid included photon blast doors installed right over the exhaust port.

So….yep I am going to say it.  Shoddy PLM cost the empire the first death star.  Boom!  That’s right, excel or whatever nightmare solution used by the Empire’s IT & engineering departments cost them the war.  I bet there was an email on their servers somewhere, now blown to space bits, explaining how the exhaust port was still unfinished, when non-conformance should have started.

The emperor hadn’t even paid off the first death star when it was blown to pieces.  I still don’t understand how he raised enough funding for the second death star.

A simple approved manufacturers list along with some basic Non-conformance and CAPA could have eliminated this and saved him a lot of moolah.

Here at Autodesk, we have customers who use PLM 360 to manage these exact type of issues. Bill of materials, Quality assurance and an approved manufacturers list are all managed in a true cloud tool.  Otherwise, they would experience the same kind of frustration when a lone x-wing, Indiana Jones and a giant talking dog manage to blow their dreams sky high!

I mean really you have to blame the emperor for such an obvious oversight.  He didn’t give his people the proper tools… but then again the Sith aren’t well known for developing others around them.

Rant finished….  I really hope you enjoy the new Star Wars episode if you have the opportunity to see it this weekend!

*Images courtesy of Disney.