Trying to help an electronics company that was going bust

Hello,
This is an unfortunate story of when I recently worked in an electronics company that is now getting closed down. I could have stopped the closure, and kept it from closing, but was prevented from being able to do this.
Could I have done any more to help them?
So, I used to work in an electronics company in UK which was headquartered in USA.
The Chief Engineer was based in USA and he was an American.
The owners of the company lived in USA and were American.
Neither I, nor any other of the non-managerial staff in UK had ever seen or heard from the company owners. There were rumours that they didn’t care what happened, as long as the money came in. There was a rumour that the American owners (who had inherited the company) once came to UK to see a concert or something…apparently they said they would drop by to our facility…however, the rumour goes that it was raining the day they were due to come and see us, and so they said they would cancel coming to see us, as they might get wet getting out of their taxi.
The Chief Engineer in USA had fooled everybody in the entire corporation that he knew what he was doing , and that he could develop all the company’s switch-mode-power-suppy type products.
I have no idea what (if any) was the relationship between the chief engineer and the company’s owners.
The chief engineer sent us a prototype product, and my UK boss told me to add a small bit of circuitry to it, and then take it into production.
However, the prototype was of terrible quality, it was awful, it would not be a robust product.
Many of the other prototypes were also terrible. Many of their working practices were bad…eg, they did thermal chamber tests on the bear pcb, instead of it being inside its enclosure. -and didn't bother to monitor the circuit whilst it was in the chamber.
I repeatedly offered to re-design the poor prototypes, but my UK boss very, very firmly told me to keep quiet, and just get on with doing as I was told.
My UK boss (who was a mechanical engineer by trade) told me that he was taking his lead from the Chief Engineer in USA, and that he would not tolerate my criticism of the Chief Engineer’s products.
Whenever I would criticise the Chief Engineer’s products, I would later find that circuits that I had been working on had been sabotaged…deliberately damaged. The project manager would come and kind of jokingly drop hints to me that they’d done the damage. I could not however prove that they’d damaged it.
My UK boss and the project manager seemed keen to be-smirch my technical reputation with the UK Overall manager….that is, to be-smirch me so that if I made a representation to the UK overall manager, then this overall manager would not be likely to take me seriously.
Also, whenever I made a complaint about the poor-ness of the prototype circuits, they would send me to work in production all day as a solderer…..it was as if they were saying, “work on the chief engineer’s products, and don’t criticise, or else we’ll take you out of engineering altogether”.
Anyway, I later left the company, as they were going to go bust making disastrous products like they were doing. They just wouldn’t listen to my advice. After I left, I wrote a report on some of the problems that I’d seen with the company’s products. I sent the report to the company’s owners. I emailed it to two address’s I found on their website.
Anyway, now I have found that the Chief engineer in USA, the UK overall manager, My UK manager, and all of the mechanical engineers, no longer work in the company.
And recently a company where I interviewed at told me that this USA headquartered company had gone out of business, and that they were taking over their work. (I am not sure if the main place , the HQ, in USA, has gone bust?)
I am genuinely sorry to hear they had gone, because I was pals with some of the good guys that were there. Theyre still open, but as I hear it, they're on their way out.
Such a shame, when I could have helped them stay afloat, but how could I have had an impact, when I was so low down in the hierarchy, having my circuits sabotaged by my gaffers?
(I am not saying my gaffers sabotaged my work out of malice…they genuinely didn’t realise that our chief engineer was useless, and so thought they were helping the corporation by sabotaging my work and acting against me. I think they had asked the personnel officer to sack me, as I had criticised the chief engineer’s work, but she wouldn’t do this)
Could I have done something more to help them? Have you been in the same situation and pulled it around?

Although, you can also keep quiet and still get in trouble.

A fellow who was leaving in a month or so locked his keys in his office. This guy had made my life and others miserable including some managers that didn't have control over him. I could have easily prevented the door damage with an intervention and a phone call. So, I get in trouble when he kicked an broke the office door because why? They knew I could have prevented it.

And it goes the other way too: While doing re-construction/upgrading, I happened to call one of our vendors enquiring about necessary upgrades: Another couple of monitoring channels. So, I tell my boss. He YELLS at me thinking that I wanted to replace it now, when all I was trying to do was to give the head up. They did start looking for a new/used $40,000 USD unit.

Then sometimes you get the: The vendor says he can't do something UNLESS I'm involved.

Other times you notice that in your mind the construction was wrong based on what I knew. So, you get "What were you doing in there?" It did prompt a walk thru with a group to identify potential problems and we found plenty. Things like shutoff valves handles embedded in a particular position in the wall. They could not be moved.

Management makes a decision to put the monitoring/alarm system in a different location "as is". I see it happening and said, "It won't even work as is". For one, the power supply has insufficient power to support the upgrades and the number of channels is going to increase on two pieces of equipment. They have "no drawings" just notes because the control system was built by me "on the fly". A feat in itself.

Watch the "dog and pony show" too. Boss wants to please his boss by "having more things done". I want to work on "future imminent needs" rather than stuff I could finish. Otherwise, someone would be twiddling their fingers and work would stop altogether.

The life of my "micro-manger". warning - it you have one, try to loose him or her.

Flyback,

You know, reading about your turmoil over that incident reminds me of my own personal turmoil as I watched the University of Alabama's football team loose to Auburn last Saturday. Did I do enough to prevent that diseaster? I wrote Nick Sabin on Sunday that everyone knew he shouldn't have tried that last second field goal. He has not responded. Should I have written the university president? (**broken link removed**)

Bad things happen to good companies and to good football teams. Did the company fail because of something you did or didn't do? We will never know. Fact is, you were fired, if it was the same complany you wrote about earlier. Move on.

John

Personality with the way you went about things, I am not surprised you got canned.

they didn't sack me, I left...but there were some good guys there, and in some ways I wish I had contacted the company owners when i worked there...but anyway, at the interview I had been warned not to communicate with the owners.