Great article on how Boeing has failed

DeadStick said:
They will teach about Boeing's downfall in all the most prestigious MBA programs for decades to come.

Naturally, they will conclude that Boeing failed because they didn't cut enough corners, outsource enough jobs, bust enough unions, buy back enough of their own stock, and bribe enough regulators to look the other way.
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Don’t forget not incentivizing c-suite with big enough compensation packages!
 
kgruber said:
The reason they failed is because they moved to Chicago and let accountants design the airplanes.

They should move back to Seattle and let engineers design the airplanes.
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I wonder what the cost of all that might be? Might be more than they can stand. Getting qualified engineers now won't be easy, and the old guys cut loose earlier aren't going to be much interested. And do they have the machinery and machinists to make the stuff? More problems.

Airlines outsourcing maintenance to low-wage countries isn't helping, either.
 
kgruber said:
The reason they failed is because they moved to Chicago and let accountants design the airplanes.

They should move back to Seattle and let engineers design the airplanes.
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It's been a long time since Boeing designed an actually new airplane. The 777 started carrying passengers 29 years ago, and the 787 did so six years later. Everything since then has been a variant of an existing model.
 
kgruber said:
The reason they failed is because they moved to Chicago and let accountants design the airplanes.

They should move back to Seattle and let engineers design the airplanes.
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You have condensed several books, numerous case studies, and many news articles into two sentences. Well done, sir.
 
Jim_R said:
The 777 started carrying passengers 29 years ago, and the 787 did so six years later. Everything since then has been a variant of an existing model.
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777 entry into service: 1995.
787 entry into service: 2011.
You do the math.

Name a major large aircraft manufacturer that doesn't produce derivative airplanes. For bonus points name one whose current production majority is not derivative aircraft.

Nauga,
from the real world
 
nauga said:
Name a major large aircraft manufacturer that doesn't produce derivative airplanes. For bonus points name one whose current production majority is not derivative aircraft.
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One key to successful engineering is to invent as little as possible. Invention entails risk.
 
Half Fast said:
One key to successful engineering is to invent as little as possible. Invention entails risk.
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So the threat of litigation has pushed good old American ingenuity and know-how off the table?
 
Dan Thomas said:
So the threat of litigation has pushed good old American ingenuity and know-how off the table?
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No.

“Risk” does not have to entail legal action. Financial loss, or even something as simple as loss of reputation, are also risks.

Inventing something new always entails the risk that the invention won’t work. Good engineers can innovate without requiring excessive invention. “Ingenuity” often entails combining existing things in new and useful ways.
 
Dan Thomas said:
So the threat of litigation has pushed good old American ingenuity and know-how off the table?
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There’s only so many ways to reinvent the airplane.

A clean-sheet design is not reinventing though: it’s usually filling an unserved or underserved market or taking advantage of technology that cannot be efficiently or effectively integrated in existing designs.

One thing every clean sheet design comes with is high regulatory overhead that is tacked on to r&d, production, marketing, and delivery of each airframe profitably out the door.
 
There’s a great Netflix documentary on the same thing. Lots of past Boeing employees talking how the corporate culture shifted over the years…
 
TCABM said:
One thing every clean sheet design comes with is high regulatory overhead that is tacked on to r&d, production, marketing, and delivery of each airframe profitably out the door.
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Another is additional training, operational, and supply chain overhead that the end user must bear. As has been posted here before, if the launch customer(s) want something (performance, capability, whatever) only available in a clean-sheet design and are willing to pay for it the airframers will give them a clean-sheet design.

The commercial transport market bears little resemblance to things like the auto market where companies roll out stuff to try and attract market share. Aircraft manufacturers will have launch customers on board from the start and significantly influencing the design. The manufacturer gets an order commitment, the launch customer gets the airplane they want/need. If a major airplane manufacturer discounted launch customers' input and said "we know it can be done with a derivative but we insist on a whole new airplane because engineers wanna engineer" they'd need a whole new facility to store the buckets of sand and hammers the (lost) customers would give them.

Nauga,
like a desert
 
Dan Thomas said:
So the threat of litigation has pushed good old American ingenuity and know-how off the table?
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To a minor extent, maybe. Bigger risk factors are technical, schedule, and cost risk. If your ingenuity and know-how fails and your gizmo doesn't work like it was supposed to, you may not meet the launch customer's technical requirements. If your ingenuity and know-how succeeds but gizmo takes longer to develop or build, you may not meet the launch customer's schedule requirements. Even if your gizmo is early and exceeds expectations, if it costs more than you estimated, you may not meet the launch customer's cost requirements. Sure, lawyers will be involved, but the fear is not the litigation itself, so much as losing a valuable order or large segment of orders.

Launch customers are not sitting in the lot waiting patiently for your new design to hit the market. They are in your shorts for most of the detailed design waiting for *their* airplane, the you and they agreed upon when the process started.

Nauga,
wordy today
 
Half Fast said:
One key to successful engineering is to invent as little as possible. Invention entails risk.
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My experience leads me to believe that with aerospace innovation and invention, technical and financial risk are mitigated by selling first to the government, initially via funded R&D and then through less demanding production orders.
 
nauga said:
777 entry into service: 1995.
787 entry into service: 2011.
You do the math.

Name a major large aircraft manufacturer that doesn't produce derivative airplanes. For bonus points name one whose current production majority is not derivative aircraft.

Nauga,
from the real world
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Hah! Apparently, I shouldn't do the math! :crazy: Thanks for the correction.
 
kgruber said:
The reason they failed is because they moved to Chicago and let accountants design the airplanes.
They should move back to Seattle and let engineers design the airplanes.
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McDonnell Douglas failed when it killed Boeing.
Boeing moved its headquarters for two reasons. The McDonnell Douglas takeover and because Washington State treated Boeing like a cash cow and made promises it reneged on.
Looking at the current state of Chicago and Illinois, I wonder if they are sorry.
 
Half Fast said:
“Risk” does not have to entail legal action. Financial loss, or even something as simple as loss of reputation, are also risks.

Inventing something new always entails the risk that the invention won’t work. Good engineers can innovate without requiring excessive invention. “Ingenuity” often entails combining existing things in new and useful ways.
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Spot on. And this is true beyond engineering.

The number of people who expect to be able to skate through their career while taking zero risk (but also expecting growing paychecks) is astounding.
You get enough of those people in a company and it becomes the culture. Lots of big, "mature" companies operate like this and it shows.
Many never invent anything that requires an ounce of risk. Everyone just wants to protect their paycheck and climb the ladder in a predictable fashion.

Andddd then you get a company like Boeing that decides to take a risk in a short-sighted, earnings-per-share driven way and it backfires big time :)
 
They just had another whistleblower mysteriously die so things are not likely getting better for Boeing.
 
DeadStick said:
Chicago and Illinois are doing just fine, thank you very much, and nothing in our water or corn made Boeing execs prioritize short-term greed over long-term success as a business.

Why don't you come out here sometime and add another color to your map? Maybe you'll learn something the talking heads on TV and radio aren't telling you.
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I think I hit a nerve.
Been to Chicago numerous times (in-laws), just never flown myself.
 
Domenick said:
I think I hit a nerve.
Been to Chicago numerous times (in-laws), just never flown myself.
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Yeah, all my in-laws are from Chicago. Every one of them are fleeing Chicago for AZ or FL. Anyone who goes back is shocked by the deterioration in the city. Cousins there getting mugged in daylight in places that would have never been possible 10 years ago. It is a city that has some issues.

That said, Boeing choosing to outsource effectively ended the possibility they would lead as innovators.
 
John Spartan said:
Yeah, all my in-laws are from Chicago.
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I thought Chicago only had outlaws.

DeadStick said:
And Chicago didn't invent greedy business execs, outsourcing, vulture capitalism, or any of the other sins that led Boeing to their current situation.
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Well, Chicago did invent mobsters, so.....
 
Every company, any thing and every thing has a beginning, middle, and end. IBM, Sony - still around, but in the twilight and will be the way of Kodak and Xerox some day. When companies get old they somehow get caught up in their own echo chamber of power point Kabuki dancing. Executives think cost cutting and profit taking equals wealth creation and growth, and become disconnected from the consequences of their own actions. The view of the world doesn't change, although the world does.

Remember Boeing at one time had the culture to literally bet the company in the late sixties with the 747. Revolutionized commercial aviation with the 707 in the late fifties. Similar to what Musk is doing now with space travel. Not inventing the airplane / space ship, just doing the hard work of making an enterprise out of it.

Boeing may well go away / shrink (just like Chrysler, etc.) and something else will take its place. Some new company that will do what Boeing did in the 50's and 60's.
 
You mean some one like McDonald Douglas?
 
McDonnell
<headshake>
 
I think they have good enough quality on the falcons and dragons given they seem to be working without loosing windows, etc.

I do have a bad feeling about the Boeing Starliner manned mission coming up, given the past test flights. Related to that, I don’t understand exactly why the government paid a lot of money to develop an alternative to Falcon and Dragon that is more expensive to fly and so far is behind schedule and will probably be less reliable/flight available.
 
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WDD said:
I think they have good enough quality on the falcons and dragons given they seem to be working without loosing windows, etc.
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It was a joke about Tesla and their infamous panel gaps...
 
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In 2010 Boeing began its CST-100 program, a commercial crewed capsule program financed mostly by Boeing. In 2014, NASA choose Boeing's the CST-100 (rebranded to Starliner) and SpaceX's Dragon as the USA's solution to crewed space access. At that time, I believe NASA wanted its eggs in more than one basket--not a bad idea. Mr. Musk developed his basket years ahead of Boeing who had a head start, while Boeing followed the typical government contract timeline of slow development, cost overruns, and delays.

At least that is my recollection, and I admit to being a fan of SpaceX.

One important difference between a risk-taker like Musk and the standard military-industrial complex, is Musk wasn't afraid to fail where only hardware was at risk. Falcon failed many times, and each time, Mr. Musk took it as a learning experience. Boeing was terrified of a PR disaster, and even so, OFT-1 launched into the wrong orbit and never docked with the space station. The capsule was recovered successfully. Remember too, in less time than Boeing developed the Starliner crew capsule, Musk expanded the Falcon launch system, and developed a Dragon cargo module and a Dragon Crew module.

I'll be watching the Starliner crewed launch this evening at 10:35 pm EDT. NASA TV. Space.com has a link.
 
DeadStick said:
Was NASA using a capitalist approach when they beat the USSR to the moon even after our original military-run space program let them get a huge head start? I would say they used a science and engineering approach, backed up by the full force of the U.S. treasury. They weren't building to a customer's specs or trying to hit some investors plan.
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oh yeah, sure, the USA had a huge head start. Let's see, the USSR orbited the first satellite, the first man in space. Oh and until around the time of Saturn boosters, the USSR had a higher, much higher throw weight... didn't they?

But, sure, NASA had a huge head start.

:rolleyes:
 
The moon landing was like winning WWII. Won the war/race by brute spending force and industrial capacity pushing the technology to and beyond its limits. The Apollo 1 fire is a stark reminder of just how much it was being pushed.

It was what was needed to win the race, but it was not sustainable.

Apollo wasn't close to being efficient, but it wasn't supposed to be. Work was spread across the country to get politicians on board, get lots of area of the country involved, etc.

Another data point. The SLS or whatever it is called now was mandated by congress to use parts of the old shuttle rocket system in part to involve various congressional districts in the contracting. It's using the old Apollo contracting and management style. And its cost is outrageous, has flown once, and will soon be eclipsed by the Starship at a fraction of the cost.
 
DeadStick said:
I would say they used a science and engineering approach, backed up by the full force of the U.S. treasury.
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And a pre-existing profit-making industrial base, run and staffed by people who wanted to (and did) put money in their own pockets by being faster than more effective than other bidders. And that extended down several tiers of subcontracting.
 
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