Posted on 12/19/2010 8:27:52 AM PST by buzzer
As Boeing prepares to announce yet another delay for the 787 Dreamliner — at least three months, possibly six or more — the crucial jet program is in even worse shape than it appears. The problems go well beyond the latest setback, an in-flight electrical fire last month that has grounded the test planes.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
If Boeing is being managed like GM, Chrysler, AIG, Merril-Lynch, and all the other examples of poor management, I'd say this was a problem that took time to bubble up to the surface. And it is probably a BIG problem that goes deep and wide by the looks of it.
Many managers are given power based on connections, MBA's, or lower positions being vacated because the manager was so bad and the people talked them up to get rid of them. Others are promoted because of Affirmative Action.
Especially in complex detailed process and procedure oriented industries with high liability products, managers should be promoted from within based on real demonstrated management skills and familiarity with the product, procedures, and processes.
After all, management can screw everything up. In the 1980's, that was actually a goal of managers. Companies would hire management from a dissimilar industry and expect the toy maker manager to run a mining machinery making company. Then the managers would intentionally create chaos and say that "chaos is good". Then they would bail out after 3 years.
I know nothing about Boeing or their management, but it is a hunch.
Read the comments to the article (many from insiders and ex-Boeing people) to get a broad sense of everything that is dysfunctional inside Boeing — Management, outsourcing, RIFing the team that built the last aircraft, HQ in Chicago, new factory in South Carolina.
Didn’t a lot of the design work go to a Russian outfit ?
Still...If it ain't Boeing...I ain't going!
They don’t call it the Lazy ‘B’ for no reason. At least they have enough government work they won’t go broke like with the 747 fiasco.
I completely agree and will throw in about engineering. Our engineers coming out of school are entirely nursed on computers. A computer is a nice tool but it does not replace common sense and creativity. It should just be a tool to aide engineering.
Just to think back when the US was the world leader in aerospace. We put men on the moon from essentially zero knowledge and experience to success in 9 years. To repeat the same feat today they say 20 years or so? Well, I hope I don’t have to wait for them to re-engineer the pencil.
Boeing may “lose the farm” on the 787 bet. They have rolled the dice before such as the 747 and won. Today may be a different story. Will the Chinese buy the remnants of the greatest aircraft manufacturer has ever seen for a song and a dance?
Not much different from what has happened to all of our industries in the past 15 years...including big dot.com business...
1. Newer generations of management are in charge. They see all that capital lying around and can’t help but wonder how to get it into their personal pockets - as opposed to using it to refurbish the business’s productions methdods, facilities...etc...
2. The same management sees all the “necessary” expenses that occur as part of operations for quality control and regulatory compliance purposes - and beleives them to be “unnecessary” and tries to treat them as any other regular expense via outsourcing, cutting corners, substituting material and specs, etc...
3. The same management lobbies government as a big business with lots of pocket money that needs “proctection” from competition, suits, investigations, etc. When the lobbying is successful - the government does exactly that.
The problem here is, when an airplane “falls” out of the sky or breaks into major sectional pieces even in the most minor runway overuns, people die.
=8-)
Actually you are wrong about the zero knowledge part.
Once of the misconceptions about the early space program succcess was that the funding provided during the 60s put folks into college who then graduated and came out and put the Apollo on the moon.
22 year olds didn’t build our space program - 30, 40, and 50 year olds with existing degrees - the vast majority of which payed their own way through college - did. Quite a few were imports from Germany shortly after WWII when the Allies moved in.
In other words - we didn’t go from zero knowledge.
=8-)
The distributed and outsourced supply chain is not the problem. Look at Airbus they do it this way since 40 years. Boeing simply tried to copy but failed, because they missed the most important point: “You can outsource manufacturing and assembly but you never ever outsource engineering.”
Even ex-engineers who have become MBA's have diverted their focus.
True
The F-16 was produced worldwide with various sections of the airframe, wing, and cockpit divided among several nations tightly with tight coordination. It was slow and difficult intially - but eventually picked up working out the bugs and surpassed 2000 units.
=8-)
VISA and MasterCard? [ducking!]
I'm dying for an explanation on this one.
Definitely a cool plane, but not in service - likely because of not wanting to show up more "modern" designs.
I found it! I think I found the problem! It’s the globally-distributed manufacturing model.
Part of Boeing’s problem, well, a large part IMHO, is that, not only are their machinists unionized, but most of their engineers!
If that were not the case, Boeing would not have attempted to outsource so much of the Dreamliner’s build around the world.
I was not talking about that. What I meant was going to the moon or space flight had never been done before. Virtually all of it was engineered and build from point zero.
No, I am not wrong.
Thanks for that.
Boeing is farming this project out all over the world.
Hate to say it but had they simply kept it in Washington state it would have gone much smoother.
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