Boeing restructuring Commercial Aircraft Group
 

(Reuters) - Boeing Co (BA.N) said on Thursday that it will restructure its commercial airplane strategy and marketing functions, just days after it lost a $9.5 billion order in Japan, previously its most secure market.

Boeing restructures commercial airplane strategy, marketing | Reuters

The place is a mess and the problems go much deeper than their marketing department. The restructuring needs to start at the top.

Boeing lost its mojo when it gave the keys to the company to the button down bean counter MBA's from McDonald Douglass right after the merger.

You only have to look at the difference between the 777 program development where the hands on Boeing bosses owned the project to ensure they were going to get a great airplane. Now contrast that to the 787, where the bosses were so reluctant to risk any Boeing money they outsourced everything. That sure worked well :rolleyes:

They have already ceded the narrow body and the jumbo market to Airbus and now it looks like the A 350 is going to kick the 787 in the butt.:{

inside news...Boeing just told a few employees they are going to demolish the space building. Thats the building with the removable top, where they have tested virtually all of their space vehicles, including the lunar rover...

everyone is very upset at this piece of history getting scrapped...

all because the bean counters moved all of that to S Cal...

Move back....
 

You're right, 'Piston. Furthermore; the idea of moving head office to Chicago wasn't a brilliant decision either. The home of Boeing is in Seattle and up until the move, things worked well. Top management could see, listen and work with the resources. But, they decided to disassociate themselves.

Its too bad that Alan Mulally left the company for Ford. They need him back. ( He is still a spry guy)
The 787 project is a lesson on what goes wrong in outsourcing. What Boeing needs to do is take back the contracts and do what they do best and that is build airplanes.

To build in the Seattle area would assure supply chain and quality control issues, something that has plagued Boeing since the start of the 787 project. That said, there were major problems with the 777 project when Boeing decided to outsource the rudder assembly to Australia. This should have been a yellow card for them to change the way that they do business.

Bigger decisions need to be made.

Big Pistons Forever - Boeing 787: Clean cabin air, June 2007

In evidence to the 2007 UK House of Lords enquiry, Boeing admit that traditional bleed air design is flawed.

“The Boeing 787 will have a no-bleed architecture for the outside air supply to the cabin. This architecture eliminates the risk of engine oil decomposition products from being introduced in the cabin supply air in the rare event of a failed engine compressor seal. In addition, this architecture improves fuel efficiency, thus reducing fuel burn and associated engine emissions.”

Memorandum by the Boeing Company

AERO - 787 No-Bleed Systems

The A350 will never 'kick the B 787 in the butt' whilst a few well informed pilots know the long term health advantages of 'bleed free technology'.

Actually, I think the problems started before the McD merger - it started when Phil Condit became CEO - perhaps the best (that is, WORST) example ever of the "Peter Principle" (simple put, someone will get promoted to their level of incompetence). :ugh:

The saying in Seattle is that Condit allowed McD to buy Boeing with Boeing's money. It's too close to being true for it to be a joke.:{

Before Condit - I never heard upper management announce that making money was more important than making a great product - the assumption being that if we made a great product, we'd make money. After Condit became CEO, it was pretty much assumed that we'd never build another new aircraft - Boeing would become 'derivatives are us' because new airplanes cost too much. That worked brilliantly on the 757-300 and 767-400 - NOT (both were massive money losers):sad:. Since that worked out so well, our new McD based management launched the 787 using the same outsourcing strategy that had worked equally brilliantly on the MD-95/717 :mad: . Scuttlebutt is that the MD95/717 program was such a train wreck that if Puget Sound hadn't bailed Long Beach out, the 717 would never have been certified.:ugh:

There was also considerably dismay that those running the company knew so little about Boeing history that they didn't know that there had already been a Boeing 717 - it was the internal Boeing nomenclature for the KC135.:mad: Pretty much everyone in the company NOT involved in the 787 program recognizes how screwed up it is. Sadly the 787 has managed to insulate themselves from rational thought and continue to believe that the 787 way is the only way to do things.:eek: Worse, the F-ed up processes that they created are being migrated to other healthy programs. I've been personally shocked at how many 'lessons learned' that the 787 has managed to 'unlearn'.

That's the bad news. The good news is that there are signs that current management has recognized the error of their predecessors ways. Outsourcing is being scaled back. BC (Before Condit), Boeing was an engineering company that built airplanes. DC (During Condit - and Stonecipher), Boeing management insisted that it was a manufacturing company that happened to do engineering :sad:. Upper management has recently said - in so many words - that Boeing IS an engineering company that builds airplanes.

So the signs are that those at the top have decided to change course - but Boeing is a massive ship that takes a long time to change direction. The iceberg is looming - only time will tell if we've actually changed course, or if the announcement of "Iceberg RIGHT AHEAD!" was met with "right, now lets 5S those deck chairs :ugh: