"There’s never just one cockroach in the kitchen."
More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback
221–230 of 454 posts
Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a pretty good chance (about 100%) that after that door fell off they are reviewing a lot of stuff and that is why this has been found, not so they can 'dump all of their known bad production issues' but simply because they are becoming aware of them and are legally mandated to report those issues. > Or maybe I am just imagining things. Quite possibly. I'm as cynical as they come but I'm actually happy that t…
I have to imagine that even a cold hearted MBA can probably appreciate that the PR damage occurring right now more than justifies the cost of a decently large team of people whose only reason for existing is auditing the assembly process.
If they want to stay out of the docket in the long run that would be an excellent move. Because if another 737 falls out of the sky and it happens over the United States you can bet that prison time for execs is going to be called for if they don't get to the bottom of this. Whether it will happen is another thing but they have run out of goodwill.
Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
Boeing is about as representative of the US government, or country, as German soccer is for our government.
Hmm, is it? Boeing is in the category of too big to fail. I agree its not government per say.. but it is really not a private business either.
Yes, the US government is not Boeing.
Yes, Boeing is a private business.
You are describing your general distaste for two entities and attempting to rationalize it.
My only guess that steelmans that is you think Boeing would cease to exist without its defense business.
Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
Selecting an engineer doesn’t absolve the board of the responsibility to choose the right guy. There are incompetent engineers, unethical engineers and there are engineers who are bad leaders. But an accountant as CEO is not going to restore a culture of engineering excellence.
Why? The CEO of a company this big, no matter their background, has no business building an intimate understanding of the tech. They’re there to set up an incentive system to further the goals of their choosing. Neither seems to call for deep understanding of neither. And no background absolves a CEO from building a surface understanding of all aspects of running the business. TBF, from my experience with VPs, techni…
There are plenty of engineers who are not suited for leadership positions, and inability to detach from the technical details and focus on the bigger picture is certainly something you'd want to watch out for. No one said these jobs are easy, or that the right people are easy to find.
But it seems just as likely that an accountant as CEO would be unable to detach from irrelevant details about accounting systems, cost savings, tax classifications, or whatever it is that low-level accountants worry about.
Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's actually exactly the wrong thing to do. The problem, at least in this case, is that Boeing chose to break off what is now known as Spirit Aerosystems into a separate entity, and now Spirit has Boeing by the balls because Boeing can't replace them and has to deal with the consequences of their shitty manufacturing and QC.
>The problem, at least in this case, is that Boeing chose to break off what is now known as Spirit Aerosystems into a separate entity Spirit is nothing more than a basket of limited liability set up by Boeing for precisely such an ocurrence. Pretending that it's anything else is just buying into their BS corporate spin.
Your comment seems to imply that Spirit is owned or primarily owned by Boeing? But I can't find any support for that. See https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SPR/holders
Am I misunderstanding your point?
Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback
#226I do get the impression that the current Boeing CEO is attempting to turn the culture around, to a more "admit the problem and fix it" kind of attitude. The problem is that, if you are doing this after many years of "deny the problem and ship it", the number of apparent problems is actually going to go up for a while. I wonder if Boeing's customers and shareholders will have enough patience for him to complete the tr…
I don't get that impression at all. He only went on a PR fest the day after boeing stock tanked (which was after the weekend the door plug flew off). He was actively trying to get faa exceptions to other max's to get them in the air prior.
Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
Boeing needs to dump the CEO and install someone from an engineering lineage if they want to build their reputation back. An engineering company run by a longtime manager with a background in accounting is in large part how Boeing got here. Fire the guy and get someone with a technical background in there.
Like this guy? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Muilenburg
This is the guy that Boeing should have made CEO https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Mulally who has a much deeper background on the civil aviation side of things.
Turned down for the Boeing CEO position, went to Ford and carried them through the Great recession as one of the big 3 auto makers that did not need a govt bailout.
I'd say call him back, but he's probably enjoying retirement by now.
Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
Boeing needs to dump the CEO and install someone from an engineering lineage if they want to build their reputation back. An engineering company run by a longtime manager with a background in accounting is in large part how Boeing got here. Fire the guy and get someone with a technical background in there.
I don't think having an engineer as a leader is some golden ticket to success. Its ultimately what ruined Nortel for example.
IME it helps tremendously on close calls where the leader needs to pick a side, and the finance/sales/legal people have very clear numbers or other quantitative data and Eng has more subjective and hard to quantify concerns like quality.
Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's frequently framed as an issue with Boing now having an accounting-driven culture instead of an engineering-driven culture. In that framing a CEO with engineering background is a logical choice to effect that culture change.
Not even accounting driven. It's MBA driven. Accounts ask how much things cost and go from there. MBA's figure out how much things need to cost to make their spreadsheet work and tell you that's what you get. Which is what happened at Boeing. They told the engineers they were going to develop the 787 for half the cost of previous models (we are very very smart). And it took twice as long and cost twice as much. Given…
The point of the 737max was that it was a brownfield design which wouldn't require recertification by airlines of all the pilots who are certified for 737min planes.
A 7B7 greenfield narrow body plane would probably have been faster to design and a better plane in lots of "don't lie to the pilot and fly into the ground when a sensor is busted" ways, but would have required all airlines to re-certify their pilots, which is both expensive and would have caused the airlines to consider airbus and boeing on the merits...
Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? The CEO of a company this big, no matter their background, has no business building an intimate understanding of the tech. They’re there to set up an incentive system to further the goals of their choosing. Neither seems to call for deep understanding of neither. And no background absolves a CEO from building a surface understanding of all aspects of running the business. TBF, from my experience with VPs, techni…
> Why? The CEO of a company this big, no matter their background, has no business building an intimate understanding of the tech. This is certainly a point of contention in modern schools of business thought, but the concept of a CEO who doesn't understand what the company builds is bizarre to me. The CEO of Boeing, IMO, should probably have aircraft engineering experience, and, ideally, also be a pilot with the suit…
>> also be a pilot with the suitable type ratings to fly the stuff they build.
Why the pilot? When it comes to handling these machines, the pilots are one small corner. I would think that someone with experience keeping them safe and functional would be more on point these days. How about someone with the ratings for maintaining the machines? No pilot has ever inspected let alone installed a door plug.