Boeing's Culture Crisis and the Alaska 737 MAX-9 Blow-out

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Does Boeing have a culture problem? Does Spirit, Boeing’ supplier, have a similar problem? And what does their relationship tell us about the recent Alaska 737 MAX-9 blow-out, and the production of the 737 in general?

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Below you will find the links to videos and sources used in this episode.

[kellyshideler]

Former spirit employee here. One of my favorite stories of Boeing is when they ran the numbers and decided that it was cheaper to not salt during snowstorms because it’s just cheaper to pay the lawsuits from slip and falls.

[unfixablegop]

When the definition of "non-core" is "not highly profitable" you're obviously asking for trouble down the road. Never in his worst dreams would an engineer call the hull construction "non-core".

[thor-cjdh]

Boeing has been on a downhill trajectory for some time now. I first noticed it in the early aughts when they made the seemingly boneheaded move of their headquarters from Seattle to Chicago. Separating upper management from the factory floor by half a continent was bound to lead to problems.

[christofferlofberg]

I have worked at several companys within QC in Sweden. Both private owned, family owned and by the state. To praise finding defects and issues has always been a naturally part of the culture. No matter the financial/delivery delay effects. And that being said, most of the companies did not even manufacture safety-related products.

Quality and safety must be the top priority from top management and the board. There is no other way around it.

[marmactwins]

Whew! I’m glad you eventually said it…”no matter how you look at this, it’s still Boeings problem.”

[jankrusat]

I'm working as aircraft mechanic / licenced aircraft maintenance engineer on both Airbus and Boeing aircraft (several types of each). Airbus has occasional bloopers, but I have never seen as many as with Boeing aircraft. We had brand new Boeing 737NGs which had lots of problems with the enine fire detection systems. It turned out that somebody at Boeing used incorrectly calibrated crimping tools to install the terminal lugs on the wire looms at the detectors. I also remember a brand new B737NG, where we had problems with an engine high pressure fuel shut off valve (essentially the engine did not shut down when the pilots turned the fuel lever off, the spar valve closed, but the engine kept on running until the fuel in the fuel line from the wing to the hydromechanical unit was used up, about 2 minutes). It turned out to be a loose Cannon plug (where the wires leave the pressurised fuselage to go into the wing leading edge, under the wing to body fairings). the plug was installed cross threaded. Somebody signed for the installation and somebody else for the inspection.

[robg]

I trained as an Airframe Technician at Short Brothers in Belfast, 1980 apprentice intake. Short Brothers was eventually bought by Bombardier and a few years ago Spirit Aerosystems took over the Belfast assembly plant. I remember that when I was working at Short Brothers, we were always told about how great Boeing was and they were the apex of quality. It's so sad to see such a decline, which I personally believe boils down to sheer greed on the part of a ruthless corporate mentality.

[PYROof]

Bottom line is that boeings quality control signed off on an unsafe aircraft. When boeing starts rewarding people who find issues regardless of the cost to boeing(like they did many years ago), then and only then can their QA be trusted again.

[Editsjidanger]

This is a excellent case study on when you outsource, then apply cost reductions to the supplier, eventually things just don't get done.

[mikeall]

I work in an industry that has a high safety consequence and IMO, there is a higher appetite for risk, among senior management and executives, in an effort to enjoy short term gains. Safety and design margins are taking a back seat to share price, more now than i have ever seen.

[mikeceranski]

Turning Boeing Wichita into Spirit was an incredibly bad idea, but even worse was moving Boeing HQ to Chicago. This removed the upper-most layers of Boeing away from manufacturing which caused two main corporate cultures to form: one in Chicago focused on all matters financial, and one in Seattle focused on meeting the performance numbers set by Chicago. This was a recipe for disaster which we're now seeing up close. The best practice for any manufacturing company is for the people on the manufacturing floor to show management what's going on.... "hey, Mr. Exec. VP this is Ralph over in Wing-box Assembly. We got an issue and I want to show it to you and see if you can help us figure it out before it becomes a real problem." That's a doable thing when HQ and Manufacturing are in the same city. Not so much when separated by 1200 miles. As a former CEO of an equipment manufacturing company I can't tell you how many times the engineering manager, a shop foreman, or even a welder would grab me and make an issue known so I could do my job -- which was to enable everyone else in the company to do their jobs, and do them right.

[cdstoc]

Blancolirio went into some detail about Spirit and Boeing's different and incompatible bug tracking systems. It sounded like the workflows defined for the plug door were the same as for an operational door. The workflow for a "door opened" event did not include a step for inspecting the retention bolts, while the workflow for a "door removed" event included that step. The problem is that for a plug door "opened" == "removed". The scary part is how many other bad workflows are currently defined in their systems?

[davidlim]

This is the type of problem when bean counters / finance takes control of what should be an engineering focused company. We have the shareholders to thank for this sort of debacle..

[frank_avtor]

Absolutely agree with all points. Trust is easy to lose and extremely hard to gain back. Any issue with any Boeing aircraft, even the lost wheel on the over 20 year old Delta B757 is highlighted by the media as "another Boeing problem". It will take a long time for Boeing to recover.

[johnfurseth]

In my view, this is your most exceptional and thorough video to date. Thank you from a retired aerospace propulsion engineer and, hopefully, a heeded call for a better and more honest culture in all of manufacturing.

[rogergriffin]

I think it is Boeing. I am a native Washinton resident and I've watched this unfold over the last 2 decades like a slow motion train wreck. I think it does go back to the greater emphasis on speed, cost, and profit over safety in general. They spun off the subcontractors to save money with non-union labor. They built the new plant for the Dreamliner in South Carolina because it's a non-union state. They've been cutting inspection personnel and speeding up production lines even though it forces workers to cut corners and take shortcuts. And it did all start after the McDonnell Douglas merger. To the extent that this is a Spirit quality control problem it still goes back to Boeing. They are the ones who pile on the pressure for a high rate of production no matter what the effects on safety.

[hmichaelpower]

As usual an excellent presentation by Petter.

It seems to me that Boing are missing an absolutely key element if their “solution”( at 19:20) is limited to more inspections, reviews, and meetings while not focussing on rewarding or promoting employees who raise quality problems and firing or demoting managers who fire or demote their subordinates for raising problems.

[erenoz]

When you see one cockroach on the floor, this means that there's a hundred of them in the walls that you don't see. Likewise, when such a serious defect makes its way to the public eye, this must mean that there are deep cultural issues in the production line that we don't see.

[Ourtown_English_Schools]

As a former glider pilot turned English teacher it is very inspiring to hear how much your English has improved since you started this channel 👍🏼
Keep up the good work ✈️

[mikev]

Thank you for the excellent in-depth videos. I am a retired AME from the Canadian helicopter industry. I started in 1975 and it was apparent early on the only protection (albeit a small protection) we maintenance types had from unscrupulous employers was government regulations and inspectors. Around 2008 the Safety Management System was brought in by Transport Canada and I saw some good value in the system, but the potential for abuse by commercial companies was immediately seen by those of us in the industry. To allow commercial companies to self regulate the very items that affect their financial bottom line is counterintuitive. Actual government inspector interaction with maintenance organizations was reduced to reviewing the safety system the company had put in place. Gone were the days of a government inspector actually looking at an aircraft…..the fox is now guarding the hen house.