Roles & Responsibilities — CWP-700 Composite Wing Panel Program

1. Why This Document Exists

Most program organizations answer the question “who decides?” by pointing up the chart. On a build-to-print aerospace program that answer is wrong at the point it matters most. The customer owns the definition of a conforming part. Fifty people can agree that a panel is fit to fly and it will still not ship, because agreement is not the mechanism — disposition authority is, and it does not sit in this building.

So this document does two things an org chart cannot. It states what each function owns, and it states plainly which decisions are not available to anyone here at any level of seniority.

The fact that shapes everything below. A nonconformance found on the floor is not a problem the program solves and reports. ⚠ Meridian Aircraft must be notified within 24 hours of any major or structural finding, and repair dispositions always require customer and engineering approval. The Material Review Board can accept-as-is or scrap within its delegated authority; it cannot approve a repair to a structural detail on its own signature. ***A program that treats a customer notification as a status update it can time to suit itself has already lost the argument it is about to have.***

2. The Shape of the Organization

Fifty people across two production shifts, plus engineering, quality, materials and facilities. Unlike the commercial programs in this portfolio, the Program Manager holds real reporting authority over most of the organization — this is a plant, not a matrixed borrow. What the program does not hold is the right to decide what “acceptable” means.

Function	Who	Owns	Does not own
Program Management	C. Tyrrell	Schedule, cost, rate readiness, customer interface, and the escalation decision	Disposition of a nonconforming part
Engineering	R. Kessler, M. Osei, T. Winslow, L. Vance	Process definition, tooling design, and the technical basis for any repair proposal	Approval of that repair — the customer approves
Quality / MRB	MRB, 4 seats	Conformance judgment, accept-as-is and scrap within delegated authority, and the evidence trail	Structural repair disposition. Any deviation from the drawing.
Production — Shift 1 & 2	16 across two shifts	Build to the released work instruction, and stopping when something does not look right	Deciding whether a finding is minor — that is Quality's call, not the operator's
Materials & Logistics	R. Bianchi + 3	Prepreg traceability, freezer control, shelf-life and out-time accounting	Extending an expired material's life. Out-time is physics, not paperwork.
Maintenance, EHS & Facilities	V. Castellanos + 3	Autoclave and equipment availability, calibration currency, plant safety	Releasing equipment for production use with calibration lapsed
Program Support	D. Okafor + 2	Planning, data, CDRL and customer reporting	—

3. Governance — Who Decides

Authority	Decides	Cannot decide
Meridian Aircraft (customer)	What conforms. Every structural repair. Every drawing change. Any deviation from the released configuration.	—
Material Review Board	Accept-as-is and scrap within delegated limits; segregation; the conformance record	Structural repair. Anything outside the delegation.
Program Manager	Sequencing, staffing, rate strategy, recovery plans, and when to escalate to the customer	Whether a part conforms
Executive Sponsor (G. Talmadge, VP Operations)	Capital, headcount, and Tier 2 change authority	Also cannot make a part conform

Notice what is missing from that table. There is no row in which seniority converts a nonconforming part into a conforming one. ⚠ This is the single most useful thing to understand about quality authority in a regulated build: escalation buys attention, resources and sometimes a customer concession — it never buys a different physical fact. ***A program manager who escalates expecting the answer to change has misunderstood what he is escalating to.***

4. The Functions, One at a Time

Engineering builds the technical case; it does not grant the approval. When a structural detail is out of tolerance, R. Kessler's team produces the analysis showing whether a repair is sound. That analysis is an input to Meridian's decision, not a substitute for it, and a repair flown on the strength of internal analysis alone is an escape, not a disposition.

Quality and the MRB hold the conformance judgment, and their delegation has an edge. The useful discipline is knowing where that edge sits before a part is on the board rather than discovering it under schedule pressure — which is why the delegation is written down and not remembered.

Production owns the build and, more importantly, owns the right to stop. An operator who sees something wrong is not expected to judge severity; they are expected to stop and call Quality. ⚠ An organization that asks operators to triage before stopping has moved the conformance decision to the least-informed point in the process and will find out at final inspection.

Materials carries the constraint least amenable to management. Prepreg has a shelf life and an out-time budget, both consumed in real time, neither recoverable by approval. R. Bianchi's team tracks it because the material does not care what the schedule says.

5. What Nobody Here Can Waive

The drawing. This is build-to-print: the configuration is the customer's, and no internal authority may reinterpret it. A dimension that is wrong on the drawing is still the requirement until Meridian changes the drawing.

AS9100 and NADCAP. The quality system and special-process approvals are external certifications. They can be lost by the plant and cannot be granted by it.

Calibration and out-time. Both are records of physical fact. Extending either on paper is falsification rather than a management decision, and the distinction has never been ambiguous.

The test used throughout this portfolio, applied here: if the program can change the answer by asking harder, it was never an independent authority. ⚠ In this suite the list of things that fail that test is unusually long — and that length is the point. It is what a regulated build-to-print program looks like from the inside.

6. How This Differs From the Other Programs Here

Question	Aerospace (this suite)	Federal	Commercial (PM, Agile)
Who defines “acceptable”?	The customer, per drawing	The PWS, competed and awarded	The sponsor, who may change their mind
What does escalation achieve?	Attention and resources. Never a different physical fact.	A Contracting Officer decision	A different priority
Who can stop the work?	Any operator, and Quality	The Government, by inspection	Practically, the sponsor
What is the record for?	Proving conformance for the life of the airframe	Proving contract performance	Managing the program

⚠ The mapping that most often misleads. An MRB and a change control board look alike on a chart. A change control board weighs cost, schedule and benefit and may decide either way. An MRB is not weighing anything — it is determining a fact and recording it, and a board that starts trading conformance against schedule has stopped being an MRB.