Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Stan Deal has outlined to employees the steps the airframe manufacturer plans to take to improve quality assurance in light of the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 near-disaster that currently has that plane type grounded by regulators.
Boeing is going to
- do more inspections
- have team meetings
- review the work done by Spirit AeroSystems
- and have outside assessments.
What they don’t appear to be doing is rebuilding processes to ensure quality from the start. They aren’t planning to reduce outsourcing of critical airframe pieces either.
In a message to employees this morning, Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Stan Deal announced a series of steps the plane maker is taking to "bolster quality assurance and controls across our factories" and at Spirit AeroSystems. pic.twitter.com/u2HMFCkMCM
— Jon Ostrower (@jonostrower) January 15, 2024
Of course, as Jon Ostrower observes, poor outsource work “tends to be a symptom rather than the cause itself” of subpar manufacturing.
As many have noted previously Boeing’s merger with McDonnell Douglas ultimately led the company to be run by financial analysts rather than by engineers. That’s ok if they get the decisions rights, but they didn’t.
Phil Condit, who had worked as a lead engineer on the 747, stepped down amidst a federal defense procurement scandal and was replaced by Harry Stonecipher who came up through Jack Welch’s GE before becoming CEO of McDonnell Douglas. Stonecipher was responsible for shifting Boeing production and sourcing processing to just in time delivery from outsourced suppliers. He said,
When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm.
A series of blunders with the Boeing 787 program, multiple groundings of 737 MAX aircraft, and interminable delays of the next generation 777X – on top of a failure to develop fresh narrowbody to compete with the Airbus A320 series or a middle market aircraft replacement for the 757 whose orders are now being monopolized by the Airbus A321XLR, leaves the company in desperate need of a reboot.
It will help tremendously if Boeing, Spirit AeroSystems, and FAA revert back to using MERIT as their reference for “acceptability” rather than engaging in those “social justice” programs that end up being detrimental in so many ways to the safety of the flying public!
Skilled labor isn’t cheap ; Cheap labor isn’t skilled .
Some else made the observation that the plug door is sometimes removed for installing satellite for WiFi (there is a picture of this process floating around the Internet), which is done by the airline after delivery, and that the problem occurred not long after WiFi installation. While the other loose bolts are still an indication of a quality problem at Boeing/subcontractors, we should be careful not to throw blame at any one particular party until all the facts are in. The investigation will take time to find out where the problem was introduced, and what processes and procedures weren’t properly followed. I’m not throwing the blame at any of the parties, just pointing out that problems aren’t quite as clear cut as they first appear. Even if the problem occurred during WiFi installation, they could have been following instructions provided by Boeing for removing/installing the plug door which had some missing steps.
Safety is the Only thing . Everything else is way down the list .
The results of outsourcing work to right to work States! And no respect for experience!
Would it have been better not to develop the 737-300 but put thise then-new CFM56 engines on a multi billion dollar clean sheet design?
If the answer is “yes”, the last paragraph of the article is correct. If not a financially good idea, then that is proof against this article’s last paragraph.
The 787 was the pioneer for commercial jet composites so a clean sheet design for the 737 MAX would not be a good decision. Likely a time for a clean sheet design would be for the next generation of engines so that the new planes would have composites and a new engine.
Would this push Boeing to move their headquarters back to Seattle, if that’s even possible now. I know they are planning to move to Washington DC but moving back to Seattle would send great signals and arguably help improve the culture significantly.
@John H
“Even if the problem occurred during WiFi installation, they could have been following instructions provided by Boeing for removing/installing the plug door which had some missing steps.”
Is it verified that there were “some missing steps” in documentation from Boeing? It *is* suspicious that both Alaska and United found loose bolts in their MAX 9 aircraft!
@Ken D
Are you suggesting that there are *no* experienced workers in those Right-to-Work states?
This may be a stretch, but I wonder if the long-term apparent decline in Boeing sort of mirrors the general slippage of America’s products and dominance over much of the world’s markets. There could be many specific issues involved with this company, but this almost seems like it is symbolic of general national decline. (After all, US Steel was recently bought by Japan.) It’s not a matter of political parties, and certainly no vague catchphrase about making the country “great again” will turn things around, not any more than Obama railing against “declinists” had any effect. But it does seem to be part of a long pattern. Granted no power stays on top forever, but things like this are painful to watch.
Agree. Boeing needs to do -ctrl-alt-delete here. It is sad to see how a once great company fall so far. It also emphasizes the importance of culture in creating successful companies. Arrogance is running too many companies and in this case running a once great company into the ground.
How appropriate for this to appear on the day the FAA proudly announces that it is going to work hard to employ those with “targeted disabilities”: “Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring.They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism.”
God bless all those with the listed disabilities. A cynic might suggest at least there’ll be somewhere for displaced Boeing and Spirit employees, no doubt those hired during Boeing’s focus on DEI, to find employment.
I have to say, when a large part of one of your new ‘planes falls off 16,000 feet AGL, maybe a little more radical solutions might be considered instead of shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. I feel that I am watching a doomed company. The decline may not be instant, but it will happen. At the end of the day Boeing may just be too big to manage appropriately.
I don’t know why y’all are complaining. Most of you want businesses and politicians who just want to make you money/maximize profit. This is the result. This is how business works. Make things cheaper and sure sometimes deadlier to maximize profit. It’s cheaper to pay fines and injured/family of the dead, than to spend so much on producing a high quality product.
For all those talking cheap labor and right to work states, you do realize the subcontractor Spirit is a union shop. Represented by the IAM.
Woofie,
I have epilepsy. What type of work do you think I can do or should I be placed in a group home and watch TV all day?
Does Boeing implementing changes force Alaska Airlines and United Airlines to change their inspection procedure?
Board tossed out of the hole in the side of a flying 737; management purged, blacklisted, shares and options confiscated. Placed into receivership.
The only way Boeing *ought* to survive this. They used industry consolidation to make themselves too big to fail, then went on to shit on all of their customers like this for a decade now.
This reaction from Boeing is not good enough. It does little to restore public confidence in flying their planes. Do better Boeing.
The recent challenges faced by Boeing, particularly with the grounding of the 737 MAX 9, have prompted the company’s leadership, under CEO Stan Deal, to take steps to enhance quality assurance. While the outlined measures include increased inspections, team meetings, and reviews of work done by Spirit AeroSystems, there seems to be a notable absence in terms of rebuilding processes for upfront quality assurance and a commitment to reducing outsourcing.
As aviation enthusiasts, we understand the intricate balance between financial decisions and maintaining engineering excellence. Boeing’s historical shift towards a business-oriented approach, especially post the McDonnell Douglas merger, has been met with mixed results. The current situation necessitates a closer examination of the company’s processes and a potential reevaluation of the outsourcing strategy.
For those seeking reliability and innovation in aerospace, it’s a critical time for Boeing to reassess its direction. As aviation enthusiasts, we hope to witness a successful reboot that aligns Boeing with its legacy of engineering brilliance.
Seems like a manufacturing mistake was made somewhere – the fuselage supplier, Boeing, or the airlines. There are a handful of reasons that plug may have been opened after leaving Wichita. Fortunately the chain of custody is short enough for an airplane in-service for a few weeks that they should be able to track it down.
Scrap the MAX altogether and recall all of them currently in service. Go back to the drawing board and make the 797 a new replacement. Have a feeling the 777X is going to be something similar.
Keep outsourcing and quality takes a dump! Those who are critical of the Union need to realize with a Union employees can speak up. Non-union, Keep your mouth shut, Keep your job!
I’ve worked for both, This is my personal experience.
@Ken D:
You realize unions sometimes deliberately sabotage things? And unions value seniority over skill.
I would not take the “high probable risk” of flying on Boeing’s machines; changing a flight is inconvenient, but smart thinking. Boeing’s management has proven its lack of concern for safety of the passenger by building that engineering mistake in the first place, just to save time and money, but not lives. How pathetic.