And there was a clear path to the 737-MAX crashes

It's a shame, and it's reckless, and it's tragic, but unfortunately it's not unique; the path which led to the 737-MAX debacle can be traced back to another 737 flight way back in 2001. It was a sad and selfish day for a once proud company.

The isolation was deliberate. “When the headquarters is located in proximity to a principal business—as ours was in Seattle—the corporate center is inevitably drawn into day-to-day business operations,” Condit explained at the time. And that statement, more than anything, captures a cardinal truth about the aerospace giant. The present 737 Max disaster can be traced back two decades—to the moment Boeing’s leadership decided to divorce itself from the firm’s own culture.

The Long-Forgotten Flight

Sadly, I can't even count the number of companies I've seen follow this same trajectory. I wish I could say Boeing was the only one, but they are far from it. The big difference though is, many of these 'other' companies don't have such visible and tragic failures as a result of their penny pinching for the sake of fat executive salaries and greedy boards of directors and/or stockholders. In any case, the mantra is the same...the bottom line is the ONLY line.

Most importantly, out of all of this 737-MAX tragedy, notice you don't see Boeing stepping forward to say they plan on overhauling any of their corporate culture, including the separation between management and engineering. So, in the end, nothing changes.

Happy trails.

I have read a bit on this and agree. They banged this jet together to compete with Airbus and the more powerful motors threw the cg off. They then tried to fix it with computer software. They even skimped on pilot training.

Boeing just relies on protectionism now. Their lobbying group is like an armed mafia mob.



a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

a reply to: lakenheath24

All because of greed.

For shizzel. Like Ford with the exploding tires, or Toyota with the sticking accelerator and on and on and on.




a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

a reply to: lakenheath24

Well, but with Boeing it's...Go BIG, or go HOME!

The shift had started three years earlier, with Boeing’s “reverse takeover” of McDonnell Douglas — so-called because it was McDonnell executives who perversely ended up in charge of the combined entity, and it was McDonnell’s culture that became ascendant.

When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm.

That is just sad.

A very interesting and surprisingly well written piece. I have passed it on to a few people I know in the industry to peruse. What I found fascinating is that if you substitute the name Boeing for other companies you get a surprisingly similar story. So it would seem that this corporate ideology grew from management philosophy at GE which slowly spread like a cancer to other companies worldwide. But the problem became much worse once it started being taught by academia in Universities and business schools. There is a reason that successful individuals like Branson say they never listen to accountants and bean counters, and Boeing's problems are an example of why. I have seen the same thing happen to my company.

I am in Power now, safety is out no.1 priority - providing it doesn’t interfere with making power, cost money and reliability. Safety will be the smallest team in the business because it’s everyones responsibility unless it interferes with the other three.

Buts it’s OK, it’s our no.1 priority, which we have pinned on every worker as well as all the KPIs to make more money.

a reply to: thebozeian

Exactly! I've seen it (a lot) in the company I work for also. It's like the old mantra...

"For so long we've had to do so much, with so little, in such little time, that now we're expected to do everything, with nothing at all...in no time flat!"

And you make a very good point about the problem getting exponentially worse since it started being taught in schools. In fact, there are schools who's whole business model is teaching this very thing...faster-cheaper. It used to be faster-better-cheaper, but now it's just faster-cheaper, screw the 'better' part. Nobody cares about that anymore...until people start dying. But, as you can see, not even this is enough to truly change the culture at companies like Boeing. Their management still sits in an ivory tower thousands of miles away from where the rubber meets the road.

I could write a book on this mentality, I see it every single day, not so much within our company but all around me. A classic example is some of these management school grads. (PMP, LEAN, Six Sigma, etc.) These young people go to these schools with virtually zero real-world experience and when they're done they pin a badge on them and all of a sudden they think they're Project Managers. Companies seek these types out because they've had "repeatable processes" and "process and procedure" beaten into their skulls, because they're 'machines'. They don't think, they don't know anything, and all they can do is follow the corporate party line. In other words, be a robot.

a reply to: Forensick

"KPI's"...there's another one I could probably write a book on!

That, and "metrics".

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
a reply to: lakenheath24

All because of greed.

Greed should be outlawed to a violation of the penal code.
To hell with taxing the rich, get to rich, or as in cases like this
the equation is easy. Sacrifice safety for profit + resulting in
any loss of life = homicide.

Toss out every hate crime and outlaw greed.

a reply to: Forensick
"Safety before schedule ", is the public and official line where I work. Of course they forgot to put in brackets (unless safety interferes too much with schedule, and we can get away with it..) Probably explains why a certain door got ripped off an A380 recently, but what the hell would I know?

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk
God, dont talk to me about LEAN, Sigma SIx, PMP, you forgot to mention the Porsche model too where you essentially just use Gant charts and pretend its something new. Id love to know how much they blew on that failure. I think we wasted something like $25 million on Sigma 10 years ago. But these kids that are occupying these junior management positions are deliberately isolated from operations so they never see the reality of what they are doing. Our corporate headquarters had $250 million spent on a refurb a couple of years back while the rest of the company was enduring austerity measures. I live with peeling paint on the walls, blocked toilets and basics like tooling and parts in short supply, constantly. And yet the PR side of the business was allowed to blow a couple of million on paint and lit logos on hangars that are scheduled for demolition soon with no replacement in sight. This is the stark and dark reality facing many companies today. It seems the Emperors and their minions really are convinced they have new clothes. And god help anyone who tries desperately to tell them otherwise.

a reply to: thebozeian

Hell, that's all any of those "schools" did, they packaged up stuff we'd been using in the industry for 30 years and called it new like they invented it, and sold it to people. The big difference was, we used all those tools when they made sense, not just because they were there. These "schools" on the other hand have focused their entire existence on these tools, and only on these tools, at the expense of the end product. They're just frigging "clerks", and that's what I call them; that, and "pimps" (much to the dismay of senior management, but I'm an old timer with more seniority than most of the senior management even). These "PM's" just pick up a phone and call someone and ask "is it done yet?", and that's the extent of their "Project Management" skills. They don't even know what "it" is they're building, but it doesn't matter; there's a form to be filled out, a box to be checked and five other bureaucratic things their "system" requires. It's pathetic really.

I have a funny story about this too which illustrates my point exactly. I had one of these 'pimps' come in my office one time and ask me how to get a piece of computer equipment across the airfield from Maintenance receiving. I told him..."Well, you hop in a truck and you go get it! He says it weighs 800 lbs, like this would somehow change my answer. Then he just stands there looking at me like...now what? I said it again, you just hop in a truck and drive over there and get it! You'd have thought I was speaking Chinese to him, he was just completely clueless. This was a "senior" guy too!! But it gets even better.

Because this particular piece of equipment was important to a larger program I was working on I decided to just go pick it up myself instead of trying to instruct this idiot on how to wipe his butt. So I hopped in the truck, drove over to the motor pool and picked up a lift-gate truck, and went and picked up the equipment. I brought it back across the airfield and had a couple electricians I knew help me unload it, took it up the freight elevator and put it in the data center where it was to be installed. Now here's the good part...

I promptly went down and grabbed mister "PM" by the ear and told him we were going to the data center. First off, he doesn't even know which way to go to even get there (and it's HIS frigging project!!), so I have to show him. Then, once in the data center, I start asking him how he's going to get the equipment installed in the racks. He doesn't know. I start peppering him with some other questions about HIS job, and he doesn't know. So finally he leans up against this pallet with a big shrink wrapped box, props his fat butt on it and says to me...."Well, I dunno, I didn't think this was part of my job. Where is this piece of equipment anyway? I guess I need to look at it." I let him sit there for a minute.

Then I said...."You're sitting on it, dumbass!!!"

Un-Freaking-believable!!! Not to mention the fact this particular piece of gear was about $2.5m dollars, and he's got his butt parked on it! So, he jumps off it like it was on fire and he's standing there looking at it in awe, wondering how it got there. I was so thoroughly disgusted I had to leave before I started breaking stuff...starting with him!

That's what these so called "schools" teach!