Boeing in talks to buy back Spirit

[SuperHoneyBadger]

I read an exposé interviewing a QC guy at Boeing awhile ago (~4-5 years). Can't seem to find it, but the gist was that management was cutting corners everywhere to keep up deliveries and he was asked to ram though parts that were out of spec or just plain wrong/unsafe. He'd been there for some time, and could reliably say that the culture had changed, and he was worried. And it was before the nosedive incidents too, as far as I remember. Anyone remember reading that?

[mowens]

I don't remember that specifically.

Boeing was doomed when they took over McDonald-Douglas and adopted their business model. Why you would aquire a failing company and then copy their business model will always be a mystery to me.

[CNCAppsJames]

I don't remember that specifically.

Boeing was doomed when they took over McDonald-Douglas and adopted their business model. Why you would aquire a failing company and then copy their business model will always be a mystery to me.

I heard "unofficially" of course, that the DOD forced the take over of MD because of the Phantom Works, Space, C-17 and the Rotorcraft implications. If they just went under there were no guarantees the important programs could have been supported otherwise.

Just a rumor. Plausible if you ask me.

That said, you are 100% correct, that takeover was NOT in Boeing's best interest for a WIDE variety of reasons.

[Incogneeto]

It's the old saying, "If you want a mouse, first ask for an elephant".

Sounds like My Last Date.

At The Bar I Told her I had an Elephant.

[CNCAppsJames]

Sounds like My Last Date.
At The Bar I Told her I had Elephantiasis.

Free fiss.

[mowens]

There were a few hit pieces from QA guys shouting. It seems no-one listened.

I'm sure the Wichita sell off and all the closures/sell offs, were because of Mulally - he changed the direction saying outsourcing and making Boeing a "final assembly plant", was the way to go?
There was a couple of TV progs following him around - fly on the wall stuff, and this was his new vision.

Harry Stonecipher was the last CEO of McDonnell Douglas and became president and Chief Operating officer of Boeing after the merger .I've always blamed him for putting in motion the changes that are causing their problems now. Also Phil Condit for allowing this to happen while he was CEO of Boeing.

[CNCAppsJames]

... What I found really interesting about the whole 787 and Boeing "new" design process, is there were no senior design engineers, being involved in these sorts of decisions - no one at the design meetings saying "nope, we tried that so don't do that".
787 was, a clean piece of paper on the drawing board....

Enter the MBA's decision making process...

I took an online Continuing Education class from UC Riverside called "Design Thinking". The first half-dozen or so classes were intriguing it was HEAVILY skewed for software design. So much so that I never finished the course as there were fewer and fewer elements that were helpful in my line of work. Opposition to design elements is discouraged. Case in point, I was outlining our process for a questionable machine reccommendation. A few steps before final customer presentation involves a "Sanity Check" with the rest of our department staff to make sure we're not missing anything. Mind you our department is 4/5 Senior Level Applications Engineers. Total department experience is 186 years. ALL of us KNOW what we're doing, yet we still happily critique each others work. Anyway, in the class I emphasised the the importance of the "Sanity Check" process and whoooooo eeeeeeeeee did the PC crowd rip me for that. It was not so gently suggested I change the name of that process. In an e-mail exchange with a group of people in the class and the Professor I pushed back. ALL of the people in the class except for me were in some sort of software development group. Not knocking those people, but it's different. Literally nobody is going to die or get injured from ANY decision they are going to make. Me on the other hand, when I design a manufacturing process I have to factor all the things that I can think of plush my team comes up with that could go wrong and could harm people or equipment. So, as unsavory as that term may be to the purple hair soy latte crowd, the term implies a certain level of seriousness of the process... IMHO and in the opinion of my teammates. All that to say, too many young engineers today are soft. They get hung up on the most inane things and it's sad. And I don't think there's anything we can do until a lot of people start dying BECAUSE of a PC  first mentality. However "Diversity Hire" pilots HAS at least raised awareness to the problem. It's HIGHLY unlikely Senior Level Engineers will come out and talk about the systemic problems with that PC culture because it would spell certain death to their careers.

Back to the takeaways from that class; they line up precisely with the reasons for the 787 failures. "New" Engineers... by that I mean Engineers with less than 5 years (or roughly 10,000 hours) experience are being put in positions and given responsibility for things they have no business being responsible for in that stage of their careers. 10,000 hours is merely the rough number where mastery of a given skill STARTS. I'll refer back to the MIT article's final sentence;

A company that is not securing its bolts correctly is unlikely to be making the kinds of strategic decisions that pay dividends in decades to come.

Strategic decisions that include salty Senior Engineers TRAINING AND MENTORING Junior Level Engineers.

[CNCAppsJames]

Flying is STILL the safest mode of transportation when compared to automobile travel. How much longer will that be the case remains to be seen.

[mowens]

They also farmed out the fuselage of the 787 to 3 different vendors; Spirit, Vought and an Italian company. There were so many problems that Boeing finaly bought the Vought plant in South Carolina. I don't remember what happened to the Italian company. Spirit still makes the forward fuselage section.

[CNCAppsJames]

At least Boeing won't take it in the shorts for this one.

[mowens]

It started with the 777 - the first all digital plane.
Tail made in Germany and the wiring looms came in and were feet short.
Imperial to metric FUBAR....that gave massive delays at the time

It took us quite a while on that program to convince the engineers that the 3D model was not "just a cartoon". For quite a while we would get a model that was wildly inaccurate and didn't match the engineering drawing, but the drawing was the controlling authority. Sort of defeated the whole "digital assembly" idea.

[RobertELee]

"Boeing CEO Assures Nervous Fliers That All 737 Aircraft Are Built To The Highest Diversity Standards"

https://babylonbee.com/news/boeing-ceo-assures-nervous-flyers-that-all-737-aircraft-are-built-to-the-highest-diversity-standards