«How Boeing put Wall St. First, planes second»

[dc-8-63]

«How Boeing put Wall St. First, planes second»

Den foerste av hittil 3 store artikler om Boeing fra Seattle Times og skrevet av Dominic Gates.

Link: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeings-long-fall-and-how-it-might-recover/

Dette var hoved oppslag i soendagens papir utgave av Seattle Times, jeg tror at dere kan lese 5 artikler foer det maa betaling paa plass.

Uansett skal jeg forsoeke gjengi en del av dette, det ikke hyggelig lesning men noedvendig aa faa med seg.

Crush the workers. Share price. Share price. Share price. Financial moves and metrics come first,” was Boeing’s philosophy, he said. It was, he said, “a ruthless effort to cut costs without any realization of what it could do to capabilities.

To drive down costs, Boeing chose to aggressively confront first its workforce and then its suppliers rather than partner with them. It left both, Aboulafia said, “angry and alienated.”

Today Boeing’s leaders are tepidly admitting that this shareholders-first, cut-costs, workers-be-damned strategy was flawed. But, for two decades, it worked.

To ensure they beat Wall Street projections every quarter, Boeing boosted the stock price with accounting tricks, such as pulling forward airline cash advances.

Its leaders outsourced work, sold off whole divisions and discarded key capabilities such as developing avionics, machining parts and building fuselages.

They moved work away from Boeing’s highly skilled, unionized base in the Puget Sound region. They weakened unions and extorted state government with repeated threats to build future airplanes elsewhere.

They squeezed suppliers by demanding price cuts every year that in turn forced the suppliers into ruinous cost-cutting and left them vulnerable to collapse during shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic.

In all this, from the early 2000s on, Boeing’s leadership emulated corporate America’s then most lionized and influential boss: Jack Welch, General Electric’s hard-edged CEO in the 1980s and ’90s.

Fortsettes…

 

[dc-8-63]

Re: «How Boeing put Wall St. First, planes second»

Videre og kilden er fremdeles Seattle Times og Dominic Gates.

These Welch acolytes treated experienced engineers and machinists as expendable, ignoring the potential damage to Boeing’s essential mission of designing and building high-quality airplanes

Litt mere om tankegangen som foerte til MAX og ikke et ny utviklet fly:

Another thread in Welch’s GE strategy was a reluctance to spook investors by risking money on expensive long-term projects. Announcing such big financial commitments immediately dents the share price.

So in 2014, McNerney declared that Boeing must do more with fewer resources and would take no more “moon shots.”

“Every 25 years a big moon shot … and then produce a 707 or a 787,” McNerney told Wall Street analysts. “That’s the wrong way to pursue this business.”

Instead, Boeing would move forward incrementally, adding new engines to the 737 and thus developing the MAX instead of a much more expensive all-new jet.

Og om forskjellen mellom utviklingen av 777 og 787:

Stan Sorscher worked as a physicist at Boeing and later as a research analyst for the white-collar union, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace. He describes with passion the engineering culture that Commercial Airplanes CEO Alan Mulally created in the 1990s to develop Boeing’s last successful airplane program, the 777.

Boeing engineering and manufacturing groups, along with teams from suppliers and customers, worked together to solve problems on the project, each ready to make sacrifices for a better overall outcome.

But on the next all-new Boeing airplane, the 787 Dreamliner, a different development model took hold, with suppliers doing much of the detailed design work. Originally, only the tail fin was to be made by Boeing.

Instead of the 777’s collaborative engineering culture, Sorscher saw Welch’s top-down management approach come to Boeing. He called the 787 a “shoot-the-messenger program.”

Engineers who raised technical doubts were told: “Follow the plan. If you can’t do your job, I’ll fire you and get someone who can.”

The new approach created rivals rather than partners. Both suppliers and Boeing employees were made to “feel contingent, and precarious, and at risk. That they had a rival who could come in and take their job,” Sorscher said.

Fortsettes

 

[dc-8-63]

Re: «How Boeing put Wall St. First, planes second»

Videre om 787 og den «nye» kulturen hos Boeing:

Boeing long ago conceded that developing the 787, its introduction delayed by years, was an operational and financial disaster.

Phil Chandler, a highly skilled machinist at Boeing for more than 42 years before retiring when COVID hit in 2020, in the last two decades of his career noted the same dictatorial approach on the factory floor.

“People who knew how to build an airplane were viewed as roadblocks. They slowed things down,” said Chandler. “The only word you could speak to executives was ‘yes.'”

Whereas in the past, first-level and even second-level managers in the factory had come up through the ranks as mechanics and had deep knowledge of the work, after Stonecipher came in those jobs shifted to white-collar people with degrees, often with MBAs.

 

[EB]

Re: «How Boeing put Wall St. First, planes second»

Sagt det før…la oss håpe at det snart kommer folk inn med fagkunnskap og ikke bare en «russetid» i fargen blå.

 

[Someone]

Re: «How Boeing put Wall St. First, planes second»

Sagt det før…la oss håpe at det snart kommer folk inn med fagkunnskap og ikke bare en «russetid» i fargen blå.

Artig nok er jo både Jack Welch, Dennis Muilenburg, og flere av disse utdannet ingeniører. Det var forresten Jørgen Lindegaard også

 

[martins]

Re: «How Boeing put Wall St. First, planes second»

Får håpe at fremtidens ledere kanskje kan lære noe fra dette. At « shareholders-first, cut-costs, workers-be-damned strategy» faktisk ikke fungerer på lang sikt… Kanskje er det håp for andre bransjer hvor man i dag ser på sine ansatte som «Expendables».

 

[Chriscross]

Re: «How Boeing put Wall St. First, planes second»

Interrant lesing, nesten så en etterhvort må abonere på amerikansk avis. Har det vært en annen tilnærming i Airbus, f.eks under utviklingen av A350?

 

[Desk pilot]

Re: «How Boeing put Wall St. First, planes second»

På et tidspunkt definerte Boeing at deres kjernekompetanse var å montere sammen kompliserte strukturer. Det å lage enkeltkomponenter var ikke kjerneområde. Det forklarer kanskje hvorfor de valgte å outsource verdifull kompetanse.

Its leaders outsourced work, sold off whole divisions and discarded key capabilities such as developing avionics, machining parts and building fuselages.

 

[Midtiblinken]

Re: «How Boeing put Wall St. First, planes second»

I andre bransjer kan du snu båten fort, og forhindre at du treffer land. I denne bransjen må du se langt fremover og konsekvensene er enorme om du bommer totalt.
Om Boeing ikke var en defense contractor ville de vært ferdige.

 

[darkcho]

Re: «How Boeing put Wall St. First, planes second»

Takk som deler. Legg gjerne ut info når resterende kommer også.

 

[OttoL]

Re: «How Boeing put Wall St. First, planes second»

Artig nok er jo både Jack Welch, Dennis Muilenburg, og flere av disse utdannet ingeniører. Det var forresten Jørgen Lindegaard også

Nå er det vel James McNerney sin tenure som CEO som fortsatt er mye av roten til problemene Boeing står i. Interessant artikkel fra Forbes i 2015: https://www.forbes.com/sites/richar...ke-it-was-any-other-industry/?sh=6d197d29579c

 

[Chriscross]

Re: «How Boeing put Wall St. First, planes second»

Artig nok er jo både Jack Welch, Dennis Muilenburg, og flere av disse utdannet ingeniører. Det var forresten Jørgen Lindegaard også

Nå må ikke du komme å ødelegge god argumenter med sånne teite faktaopplysninger.

 

[dc-8-63]

Re: «How Boeing put Wall St. First, planes second»

Artig nok er jo både Jack Welch, Dennis Muilenburg, og flere av disse utdannet ingeniører. Det var forresten Jørgen Lindegaard også

Nå må ikke du komme å ødelegge god argumenter med sånne teite faktaopplysninger.

Det dreier seg vel neppe om utdanningen, men om ledelse filosofi, strategi etc.

Janne Carlzon var vel MBA som ikke hadde styring paa oekonimien, men var en meget dyktig strateg, inspirerende leder.

Det vi kan enkelt enes om er at det har vaert null 0 WOKE ledelse hos Boeing

Mere fra den foerste artikkelen:


“Darth Vader” as CEO

Adam Pilarski, veteran aerospace analyst with consulting firm Avitas and former chief economist at Douglas Aircraft, said in an interview that former CEO McNerney must take “a big share” of the blame for Boeing’s decline.

Aggressively anti-union, McNerney sited a new 787 assembly line in nonunion South Carolina. Then in 2014, he finally forced Puget Sound area Machinists to give up their pensions with threats to build Boeing’s next big widebody jet, the 777X, in another state.

Later that year, he joked about employees “cowering” before him.

Pilarski said this came from “the GE mentality … not thinking about long-term relationships

 

[dc-8-63]

Re: «How Boeing put Wall St. First, planes second»

Gaarsdagens artikkel - den 3 i serien:

New Boeing whistleblower alleges serious structural flaws on 787 and 777 jets

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/new-boeing-whistleblower-alleges-serious-structural-flaws-on-787-and-777-jets/?utm_source=marketingcloud&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=BNA_040924221154+Boeing+whistleblower+alleges+structural+flaws+on+787s+and+777s_4_9_2024&utm_term=Active%20subscriber

VG hadde mye av dette i gaar, andre kilder som New York Times har ogsaa skrevet mye av det samme som Seattle Times, men med fokus paa 787.

Men det er ogsaa et hittil lite kjent problem med 777 bygget etter 2015:

On the 777 program, he said he found that a new fuselage build system that Boeing first introduced in 2015 was implemented poorly so that the large fuselage panels shipped in from Japan didn’t align properly in the assembly equipment.

This was the Fuselage Upright Build System, which Boeing engineers developed in 2014 inside a nondescript facility in Arlington. The idea was to get rid of the massive tooling equipment used inside the Everett plant to assemble the large 777 panels into fuselage sections and to automate the drilling and fastening that stitched the panels together.

It proved problematic, and in 2019 Boeing finally abandoned the automated drilling robots as impractical. Mechanics went back to stitching the panels together by hand.

However, Boeing otherwise retained the new tooling system, which Salehpour said is not perfectly compatible with the parts designed for the older tooling.

As a result, parts were misaligned and mechanics had to use brute force to fasten them together, he said.

“I viewed severe misalignments when the plane came together, which was remedied by using [an] unmeasured and unlimited amount of force to fit the misaligned holes and parts together,” Salehpour said. “I literally saw people jumping on the pieces of the airplane to get them to align.”

Jumping up and down could deform parts enough so that the holes aligned temporarily, allowing the mechanic to hit a pin with a mallet into the hole, he said.

 

[Cloudmaster]

Re: «How Boeing put Wall St. First, planes second»

Takk for at du deler dette - det er nesten vanskelig å tro at det skulle gå såpass skeis med en organisasjon som Boeing. De første varslene kom vel for mange år siden, jeg kjente en sentral person i Human Factors miljøet i Boeing, og han var bekymret allerede i 2004 - "they have fired all the people who can say "no"...

 

[dc-8-63]

Re: «How Boeing put Wall St. First, planes second»

Artikkelen om Whistleblower blir stadig oppdatert, dette er det siste som er lagt til etter pressekonferansen:

Threats and harassment

In the news conference, Salehpour said he was partly motivated to come forward by the experience of talking to an engineer friend with whom he worked on missile systems in the 1980s and ’90s.

After the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986 — when all seven astronauts died after an explosion, the ultimate cause of which was later traced to flawed rubber O-ring joint seals — his friend told him that during development he had tried unsuccessfully to draw attention to the O-ring vulnerability.

Salehpour said that made him realize, “I would have to speak up regardless of the cost of my career.”

Debra Katz, another of his lawyers, said at the news conference that Salehpour repeatedly brought up his 787 concerns with supervisors and last month submitted a formal ethics complaint internally.

“Initially, he was just told to shut up. Then he was told he was a problem. Then he was excluded from meetings, and he was excluded from taking travel with his team,” Katz said. “He was barred from speaking to structural engineers. He was barred from speaking to mathematicians and others to help him understand the data.

 

[dc-8-63]

Re: «How Boeing put Wall St. First, planes second»

Artikkel nummer 2:

FAA’s ‘cozy’ relationship with Boeing at issue again after Alaska Air blowout

Korreksjon fra min side, denne er skrevet av: Patrick Malone

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/faas-cozy-relationship-with-boeing-at-issue-again-after-alaska-air-blowout/

The FAA basically takes orders from Boeing. That’s been going on for the past 10, 15 years for sure,” said Joe Jacobsen, who worked for Boeing from 1984 to 1995 and then at the FAA for more than 15 years. “At the FAA, they talked about being a partnership [between the regulator and the company]. I would call it more of an abusive-spouse relationship.”

To find the origins of Boeing’s manufacturing troubles requires some history. Multiple former Boeing and FAA employees point to the McDonnell Douglas merger with Boeing in 1997 as the start of the current troubles.

Almost immediately, McDonnell Douglas’s profit-driven ethos began to push safety aside, according to Jacobsen. He said that trajectory snowballed in the years following the merger. That’s supported by the congressional report from the 2020 hearings; it showed that pressure exerted on manufacturing workers by Boeing managers led to mistakes and stoked reluctance to acknowledge or fix them.

If you’re only looking at the next quarter’s financial statement, then everything gets pushed off,” Jacobsen said.

A change in the way the FAA monitored aircraft manufacturing only fueled the problem.

In 2005, the FAA, with the support of Congress, created a system for delegating oversight of the manufacturers to the manufacturers. While some measure of delegation had existed since the 1950s, the new system was designed to vastly expand the practice, and did.

The new approach replaced a system of inspection that relied on specific individuals designated by the FAA to be its eyes on the factory floor. Suddenly, it redirected FAA inspectors’ eyes away from a narrow focus on specific work to a far broader approach that assessed compliance of manufacturing systems.

“FAA managers used to call it ‘getting out of the critical path,’ ” recalled Mike Dostert, an engineer who worked at Boeing and later the FAA.

Even before the aircraft manufacturers approached the government about expanded self-policing of their work, the FAA was moving in that direction, Dostert said.

Boeing had decentralized its supply chain by selling off some of its component manufacturing operations, including Wichita, Kan.-based Spirit AeroSystems, where 737 fuselages are built before being shipped to Renton for assembly. The global diaspora of suppliers further obscured regulators’ view into manufacturing.

That business model saved Boeing money up front, but it created a real problem,” Dostert said. “I would go to meetings as an FAA rep and ask the engineers, ‘What about this?’ They’d say, ‘I don’t know, we have to ask the supplier.’ ”

Suppliers didn’t always provide worthwhile answers.

The supply chain’s impact on certification and regulation captured the spotlight in 2013, when Congress held hearings over a lithium battery fire in a Boeing 787 Dreamliner in Boston. The battery was built in Japan. The system it connected to was from France. And the FAA never visited either manufacturer.

 

[joandreas]

Re: «How Boeing put Wall St. First, planes second»

I andre bransjer kan du snu båten fort, og forhindre at du treffer land. I denne bransjen må du se langt fremover og konsekvensene er enorme om du bommer totalt.
Om Boeing ikke var en defense contractor ville de vært ferdige.

mange flyselskap har gått duken på kutte vedlikehold for mye. man sliter med pålitelighet og ansattes moral når man kutter for mye. Blifabrikker feks tåler ikke for mye gjennomtrekk.
(alaska airlines video. men md 80 løsning på 1 skrujekke var nok ikke så smart)

https://youtu.be/Y2A_fsx7prY?feature=shared&t=2340
Med tanke på hvor forsinket starliner kapselen har blitt. har de nesten bare forsvar igjen.

 

[Midtiblinken]

Re: «How Boeing put Wall St. First, planes second»

mange flyselskap har gått duken på kutte vedlikehold for mye. man sliter med pålitelighet og ansattes moral når man kutter for mye. Blifabrikker feks tåler ikke for mye gjennomtrekk.
(alaska airlines video. men md 80 løsning på 1 skrujekke var nok ikke så smart)

https://youtu.be/Y2A_fsx7prY?feature=shared&t=2340
Med tanke på hvor forsinket starliner kapselen har blitt. har de nesten bare forsvar igjen.

Ingen selskap jeg kjenner til i den vestlige verden har kuttet på vedlikehold, selv mot slutten.

 

[dc-8-63]

Re: «How Boeing put Wall St. First, planes second»

mange flyselskap har gått duken på kutte vedlikehold for mye. man sliter med pålitelighet og ansattes moral når man kutter for mye. Blifabrikker feks tåler ikke for mye gjennomtrekk.
(alaska airlines video. men md 80 løsning på 1 skrujekke var nok ikke så smart)

https://youtu.be/Y2A_fsx7prY?feature=shared&t=2340
Med tanke på hvor forsinket starliner kapselen har blitt. har de nesten bare forsvar igjen.

Dessverre ligger Alaska ulykken oss svaert naert, min kone var Flyvertinne i Alaska og vi mistet noen venner i denne ulykken (det var svaert Alaska ansatte ombord).

Alaska gjorde mye feil som foerte til denne ulykken, men det var ikke innsparinger. Paa den tiden opererte Alaska 737 og MD80 og det de gjorde var aa standardisere med bruk av en type smoerefett (Grease) for begge typene, de valgte den dyrere typen som Boeing hadde som krav, men det er ikke alltid at et dyrere alternativ virker bedre og i dette tilfellet hadde det billige smoerefettet egenskaper som forhindret Jack Screw problemer i utgangs punktet.

I andre bransjer kan du snu båten fort, og forhindre at du treffer land. I denne bransjen må du se langt fremover og konsekvensene er enorme om du bommer totalt.
Om Boeing ikke var en defense contractor ville de vært ferdige.

Det som er bekymrings fullt for Boeing er det ikke tjener gode penger paa forsvaret, de taper vel ennaa penger paa 767 Air Tanker.

Det kom ogsaa frem denne uken at Boeing ikke har levert noen av de 11 777 F de har bygget i 1st Kvartal, det staar ferdig stilt paa Everett som Glidere, de mangler Motorer for GE har store leveranse problemer, ikke kvalitets problemer.

Ingen leveranse ingen betaling - det snakkes vel om 1.6 Milliarder USD staar paa Everett.