A bit of background
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamba_Pistol
Link is from here: https://www.forgottenweapons.com/the-end-of-the-mamba-a-tale...
The Forgotten Weapons video says that probably less than 100 of these were ever produced, and the production line never managed to make one that worked properly. This seems like an important detail which is missing entirely from the Wikipedia article. (There used to be a paragraph mentioning the small production run, but it got lost in this edit[1] in 2021.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mamba_Pistol&diff...
And some more background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodesian_Bush_War
Interesting, but what's the intended takeaway, other than "Hardware is hard?"
My only useful takeaway was on page 68 when Val Forgett talks about being specific and complete in every communication.
Management and communication is evidently quite a bit harder.
This is from the paper drawing era. One reason that AutoCAD was such a success was that, at last, you could ship editable drawings to others. You could be sure the dimensions totaled properly, since dimensions were derived from coordinates. This project ran into both problems - a supplier had drawings which disagreed with the company doing the assembly, and changes made in one part of the operation didn't propagate back to the master copy. Modern manufacturing uses configuration management systems on drawings and models, just as programmers do with code. Outsourcing remains a headache.
There was a philosophical difference in manufacturing between the US and UK through WWII. In the UK, it was considered normal to have workbenches with people using files to touch up parts that didn't fit. In Detroit, parts that didn't fit were rejects, and discarded. The classic Detroit tester is a go/no go gauge.[1] This allowed assembly by low-skill workers. In the transcript of the meeting, you can read the argument between people from those different mindsets.
The US mindset also allows effective massive production, and the ‘American System of manufacturing’, aka the ‘armory practice’ [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_system_of_manufactu...]