I feel like I’ve been picking on Boeing a lot.
I’ve criticized their woke advertising.
I’ve criticized their failures for the Starliner lack of testing.
I want to make it clear that I have no personal animus towards Boeing. I not a disgruntled ex-Boeing employee.
I am an engineer in an aerospace city with a passion for defense and space exploration. I should be a Boeing fan.
My problem is that Boeing, to me, exemplifies the C-Suite corporate rot that occurs when executive level management disconnects in their brains the shareholder value of the company from the company’s core competencies of producing a quality and safe product.
An aerospace company should make air and spacecraft that complete their missions without incident.
To do that requires engineers and technicians that take pride in their work and do their job well. That requires management to promote a culture of quality and to go to bat for the engineering and test teams when they demand test data, and to value the input of people who try to warn the company of problems.
When you don’t have that, you get shit like this:
Boeing finds debris in fuel tanks of many undelivered 737 MAX jets
Um… what?
Boeing Co (BA.N) has found debris in the fuel tanks of dozens of undelivered 737 MAX jets amid ongoing inspections as the Chicago-based planemaker struggles to restore the trust of airlines and the wider public in the grounded fleet.
This is not restoring trust.
Boeing found debris in the fuel tanks of about 35 aircraft, a company spokesman confirmed on Friday. A person familiar with the matter told Reuters that more than 50% of the undelivered 737 MAX jets inspected thus far have had debris found in them.
Foreign object debris, an industrial term for rags, tools, metal shavings and other materials left behind by workers during production, has been a quality-control issue for various Boeing aircraft, such as its KC-46 tankers.
This week, an internal memo seen by Reuters showed that Boeing found debris that could pose potential safety risks in the fuel tanks of several 737 MAX aircraft in storage and waiting to be delivered to airlines.
That plane is never going to fly again.
I doubt there is enough money to bribe Congress to authorize the sale of a plane with an autopilot that likes to take a nosedive into the dirt and has a coinflip’s chance of having some shit in the fuel tank get sucked into the engine.
This is probably why it was announced:
Boeing said it burned through $4.3 billion in the first quarter and will cut 10% of its workforce
Boeing announced Wednesday that it burned through $4.3 billion in cash in the first quarter and posted a $641 million loss, as the company braces for a prolonged impact on the aerospace sector from the COVID-19 pandemic, combined with the ongoing 737 Max crisis.
This is about 16,000 people.
Don’t bullshit me that this is COVID-19 related.
Yes, flights are down. But aircraft have a fixed service life. All this does is delay the purchase of new aircraft by some period of time. Once normal flight operations resume, aircraft turnover will return to normal.
And don’t tell me “in the post COVID world, fewer people will fly because of the risk.” I was told that after 9/11 too and that lasted a year.
Furthermore, the government of the US and other countries in Europe are still pushing fuel efficiency standards for aircraft that will necessitate the purchase of new planes.
This loss is the 737MAX and the reputation for failure that Boeing is developing coming home to roost.
This meme says it all:
The current downfall of Boeing is a masterclass in how not to run a company.
If anything will save Boeing, it is a return to a focus on producing quality aircraft by creating a corporate culture of quality and performance that goes all the way up to the top levels of management.
Not one that cuts tests, hides bad data, and hires people who leave rags and garbage in fuel tanks to save money.
If Boeing’s valuation does crash into the ground like a malfunctioning 737MAX, I’ll be happy to buy the company with the cash in my change jar and run it as an engineer, not a stock price.
Former aerospace industry guy here (AE degree, Lockheed Skunk Works analyst). Hubris and complacency — that’s what we have here.
Boeing management really amped-up the disconnect when they moved the execs to Chicago years ago.
I have a strong feeling that the debris is related to union culture. Management that’s afraid of the union and a union that knows its employees will not be fired (or will be re-hired) because the company is scared of them. There are many good workers, but also a whole lot of them who don’t give a shit and do shoddy work or intentionally F stuff up so they will have to redo work (and thus get more pay).
I have to agree with scrappycrow. I worked at Kennedy Space Center for 30 some-odd years assembling and testing spacecraft. It’s why we ALWAYS had a step in the procedures to “verify that the verified verify has been verified”.
The cause of a majority of failures on orbit stemmed from last minute changes to the design that didn’t get sufficient testing done on the ground to root out the bugs before flight, but you can’t imagine the crap we found during final FOD inspections, even in a place where “quality” and “mission success” were supposed to be paramount.
Don’t get me started on the fight to make the schedule.
I’d say Boeing was well along the sinking ship path before covid, sinking but still barely alfoat because bailing and pumping was working. Covid simply is a torpedo fired from an undetected sub that has helped expedite the sinking process.
Commercial aerospace outlook is not good imo and is not good enough that this slow down may be the final nail in the coffin for Boeing and hammer it closed all together for some of the little suppliers.
Yes, clearly Boeing can’t blame its issues on the CCP virus.
Between the move to Chicago, the MCAS “design” disaster, and the rocket with its clocks off by hours, there is no sign of attention to quality required for a successful consumer products company — let alone that requires for an aerospace company.
My FIL was a senior engineering exec at BoingBoing in the heyday and got his ass out before the 787 fiasco. He had some choice words for the company on his deathbe
That is all.
I won’t sugar coat it. As a former Boeing employee, I’ve seen where the rot is: Executive Compensation. The Execs are rewarded and retained mainly on their “Making Their Numbers.” Nothing else matters. Your sector’s profitability doesn’t meet the goals imposed on you: No exec comp pay for you! And you’re likely going out the door because you hurt your boss’ chances of meeting his goals.
So, decisions are largely made based on short term personal gains. Your system needs more testing and a possible redesign to ensure the lives of the crew and passenger? Sorry, that’ll hurt this quarter’s profitability. No-can-do. I’ve been in financial meetings where things like that were said unapologetically by an exec.
With Boeing’s Top-Down, Executive-Driven culture, what an exec says is gospel. You can’t question an exec’s decision with any expectation of success. So, doing the right thing just isn’t done. And people are dying and programs are failing.
This is what happens when executives get trained by McKinsey & Co. This focus on short term gains and executive compensation over long term corporate success has killed or is killing every company in America that adopts it.
It is a proven strategy for failure.
My son in law was an accountant for Spirit Aero in Wichita. No more. He got while the getting was good.
Air travel and aircraft manufacturing will recover eventually. It’s just too damned useful to be able to fly across country in a few hours, or overseas in a day or so for trips halfway around the world. Will Boeing continue to be the supplier of choice? Quite possibly not. Airbus or another foreign manufacturer (China?) could well buy Boeing’s assets at fire sale prices. Boeing’s management definitely screwed the pooch on the 737 MAX and to lesser extent the 787 MAX, can the value of the Boeing brand be saved? I don’t know, but I doubt that current management can do it.
Happens when any engineering/tech type company starts getting run by the accountants. Hewlett Packard was THE place for test equipment, calculators, high end computers, etc… then the accountants started running the place and…. Grumman, same thing. Sperry….same (although there were about four million mergers before the company finally descended to empty shell status).
If you are going to be a company that wants to build high tech items, heavily reliant on solid engineering and precise construction, you cannot allow someone who does nothing but stare at spreadsheets all day to make the decisions about how much can be spent on testing, etc…
What a shame. Boeing aircraft were war-winning products in WW2. Could have been far different results without them. Today? It’s a damn shame.
My problem is that Boeing, to me, exemplifies the C-Suite corporate rot that occurs when executive level management disconnects in their brains the shareholder value of the company from the company’s core competencies of producing a quality and safe product.
Nail on the head. I was an engineer for Boeing in Wichita for nearly 40 years, and could see this happening. I was able to retire early and am very glad I did.
Did you see that NASA’s acting chief of human spaceflight, ex-astronaut Ken Bowersox said, “… I have decided to eliminate Boeing from further award consideration.” ?
In 2014, NASA awarded parallel contracts to Boeing and SpaceX to get manned space flight going in the US again. At the time, they said Boeing was technically superior but they wanted more suppliers. Now they’re saying SpaceX has outperformed Boeing at much lower cost.
Boeing was dropped from consideration for the lunar cargo contract. NASA said that of the four contenders, Boeing had the lowest overall technical and mission suitability scores.
From Ars Technica
I am never one to advocate for the middle, but the middle was squeesed out by the executives and the union. When Airbus had its strike awhile back, I was like “great time for Boeing to gain some ground, buold some good product and make some headway” then their union said”Airbus, hold my beer”.
They might have made it with either a greedy union or a greedy board, but with both, they are screwed. I have a buddy up there that loves the union. He is almost gaurenteed to be able to buy stuff lightly used, about every six months, for pennies on the dollar as all the union guys sell off their toys that they bought when they were not on strike, bit now are.