Downfall: The Case Against Boeing.

[stevej37]

Ralph3

No..sorry, I should have been clearer. I was just remarking on your years of service.
I retired from an Ag business in MI in 2015

I might read that one...I also see the book 'Fall From the Sky'...looks good also.

[astrochex]

Originally Posted by Ralph3.

Where you a Boeing guy? My dad worked there 39 years, started right after the Korean Conflict. I started in Renton as a 727 final assembly mechanic in 1978. Served a machinist apprenticeship with Boeing Aerospace at Plant II and went on from there.

We can thank Uncle Phil and Uncle Harry, the company went from an engineering firm to a cost driven one after the merger.

There is a book out that covers the story, Flying Blind by Peter Robison.

Phil Condit was a peach too.

[Superman]

There is an inherent conflict between the goal of making the most short term money and the goal of making the best and safest airplanes. Boeing abandoned the latter in favor of the former. With predictable results.

[StevoRocket]

I just ordered this book, watched the Netflix program a couple of days ago.

[zakthor]

Watched it - what a lightweight singsong tale. OMG there's a bad greasy story there that they didn't tell. No interviews with the engineers that worked on the system? They need access to the inside story.

I really expected movie to go into the details of the doj deal with boeing, how exactly did those negotiations go? Only prosecuted the loudmouth test pilot with the incriminating emails and the execs all walked - get to retire to their ski resorts. Here I won't be happy until their heads are on pikes.

Something thats super weird for me: the new ceo is calhoun. GE under welch, nielson, blackstone. I'd have thought I'd get a bad vibe from him but he's sure got my number. He opens his mouth its always exactly what I want to hear. Actions matter more than words but wow his words have been good. I'll never buy boeing but confused and surprised that I like calhoun even though I feel like I must be deluded.

[IROC]

I worked for McDonnell Douglas/Boeing for almost 20 years. I’ve met Condit and Stonecipher - Stonecipher on a few occasions - he even hung out in my cubicle for a while once.

While I agree with premise that “shareholder value” drove the company in the wrong direction, I strongly disagree that this can be blamed on McDonnell Douglas. I worked in one of the only (maybe the only?) locations where both McDonnell Douglas and Boeing had offices, so I had a front row seat to the way each company did things. I can state from my experience it was not McDonnell Douglas that diluted the engineering focus of the company.

It is laughably ironic to see Boeing Commercial Aircraft employees blaming McDonnell Douglas for their downfall after Boeing basically eliminated all evidence of MD commercial aircraft right after the “merger”. At the time, Boeing even refused to call it a merger. McDonnell Douglas was called a “Wholly-Owned Subsidiary of the Boeing Company” up until they did away with the name altogether.

I was proud to work for McDonnell Douglas. Boeing - not so much. I was a second-class citizen and left in early 2008.

[astrochex]

Originally Posted by IROC

I worked for McDonnell Douglas/Boeing for almost 20 years. I’ve met Condit and Stonecipher - Stonecipher on a few occasions - he even hung out in my cubicle for a while once.

While I agree with premise that “shareholder value” drove the company in the wrong direction, I strongly disagree that this can be blamed on McDonnell Douglas. I worked in one of the only (maybe the only?) locations where both McDonnell Douglas and Boeing had offices, so I had a front row seat to the way each company did things. I can state from my experience it was not McDonnell Douglas that diluted the engineering focus of the company.

It is laughably ironic to see Boeing Commercial Aircraft employees blaming McDonnell Douglas for their downfall after Boeing basically eliminated all evidence of MD commercial aircraft right after the “merger”. At the time, Boeing even refused to call it a merger. McDonnell Douglas was called a “Wholly-Owned Subsidiary of the Boeing Company” up until they did away with the name altogether.

I was proud to work for McDonnell Douglas. Boeing - not so much. I was a second-class citizen and left in early 2008.

100% true. I was working in Long Beach at the time of the merger, it was very sad to see the commercial line go away.

I traveled to Renton not long after the merger. I will never forget a Boeing manager talking about a Blue Angels show he had recently seen. It torqued me when he said how proud he was to see the Boeing F-18s performing. It still bugs me, actually.

[stevej37]

Originally Posted by StevoRocket

I just ordered this book, watched the Netflix program a couple of days ago.

I'm surely going to read this book. The docu on Netflix could only show so much. (I did enjoy it although)

[Jeff Higgins]

Legacy McDonnell Douglass employees will no doubt have a different take on this than legacy Boeing employees. Both will defend their respective company's role in all of this. I guess that's commendable, to a point, anyway.

Impartial observers, aerospace industry analysts, are, however, pretty unanimous in their agreement. They all pretty much agree that the cause of all of this was that The Boeing Company adopted the failed management practices of McDonnell Douglass. These practices destroyed McDonnell Douglass and left the company in the position that allowed Boeing to purchase them. Once placed in charge at Boeing, Harry Stonecipher implemented those very same management policies that had caused McDonnell Douglass to fail.

This is all very, very well documented, by impartial outside observers and analysts. There are reams of written material outlining just how this happened, along with how it affected the company. Again, from independent industry analysts - not disgruntled Boeing employees looking for someone to blame.

[Seahawk]

This is, and I mean it, the most interesting thread here in a long time.

Management ethos in Aerospace is not like management practices at Amana.

[IROC]

McDonnell Douglas was in trouble long before Stonecipher took over. The writing was on the wall. McDonnell Douglas did not have (and could not raise) the capital to develop a new commercial airliner. Everything was just evolutions of DC-9s (MD-80, 88, 95 and the ‘717’ ) and derivatives of the DC-10 (MD-11). As a result they were always eating the scraps left over from Boeing and Airbus. Then we “merge” and the new Boeing has a commanding share of the commercial aircraft market. Then, Boeing kills off the MD commercial planes and 3-4 years after we merge, Airbus does the unthinkable and overtakes Boeing in market share. Hardly MD’s fault that early in the game.

The C-17 was struggling with structural challenges due to its revolutionary use of carbon fiber. The early 90s were tough. John McDonnell was a great guy, but the ironic thing again was that I think McDonnell Douglas was too focused on the technical side and not the financial and they just slipped into the red year after year…. Then came Stonecipher…

I was in the manned space flight part of the company (Spacelab, mostly) but transitioned to work on Space Station when we merged. Boeing had dropped the ball so badly on the ISS program (zero award fee one year) that McDonnell Douglas basically took over and pulled it back out of the ditch.

[Jeff Higgins]

Originally Posted by IROC

McDonnell Douglas was in trouble long before Stonecipher took over. The writing was on the wall. McDonnell Douglas did not have (and could not raise) the capital to develop a new commercial airliner. Everything was just evolutions of DC-9s (MD-80, 88, 95 and the ‘717’ ) and derivatives of the DC-10 (MD-11). As a result they were always eating the scraps left over from Boeing and Airbus. Then we “merge” and the new Boeing has a commanding share of the commercial aircraft market. Then, Boeing kills off the MD commercial planes and 3-4 years after we merge, Airbus does the unthinkable and overtakes Boeing in market share. Hardly MD’s fault that early in the game.

The Douglas Aircraft Company was once a proud, independent, "old school" aircraft manufacturer. They took chances, made investments - with their own money - much as Boeing had always done. They were deep into the commercial market, a far riskier market than the military market.

McDonnell Aircraft were a far different company. John McDonnell was infamous for not taking any chances with his own money. Risk avoidance was the name of his game. He was the personification of that old joke about how copper wire was invented - two Scotsmen fighting over a penny... He was all about the guaranteed military contract.

I worked with a few former Douglas engineers early in my career. Their opinion of McDonnell Aircraft was a foreshadowing of Boeing employees' opinions of McDonnell Douglas. They saw McDonnell Aircraft as the failed entity that had somehow swooped in and purchased (not merged with) Douglas. One of their funny remembrances of those days involved the yellow #2 pencils that they all used, with "McDonnell Douglas" imprinted in gold leaf on one flat. First thing they would do, before ever using those pencils, was feed them to a pencil sharpener until the "McDonnell" part was ground off.

It was apparently the McDonnell business model that precluded new aircraft development (at least commercial) at McDonnell Douglas. Like you said, endless derivatives of outdated aircraft. At Boeing, with 777 just entering production, we were all set for our next new, clean sheet aircraft. "Then came Stonecipher" (as you note below)...

Following the MD model, Harry would not allow a new, "clean sheet" design. At least not without engaging what he referred to as "risk sharing partners", per the MD model. All major manufacturers sub out work and, in the case of Boeing vs. MD philosophy, there was a very important difference.

At Boeing, we had always maintained design authority over every part on the aircraft. Oh, the various subs often designed the parts they were going to supply, but Boeing maintained absolute, final engineering authority over those designs - "final buy-off". And, regardless of who designed it, Boeing owned that design.

MD's "risk sharing partner" model was different in one very important respect - the subs, or "risk sharing partners", "owned" their designs and, more importantly, held absolute engineering authority over them. They were designed to meet a functional specification, how they got there was up to them.

I well remember the first time I was exposed to the ramifications of that philosophy. I (along with every other legacy Boeing engineer) received an "open letter" from one of our own, a guy who had been tasked to sort out cockpit integration issues on our newly inherited 717 (just another old DC-9 iteration). Raytheon and Hughs had each supplied some cockpit electronic component that did not "talk" to each other. At Boeing, we would simply drive the required design changes to one or the other or both until they played nice with one another. We had the authority to do that.

Well, not so at MD. Raytheon and Hughs owned their respective designs in their entirety, as "risk sharing partners". Each had independently met their design specs as provided by MD. As a result, there was no over-arching authority to compel either to make the required changes. The changes had to be negotiated and contracts rewritten, and, of course, money paid. Watching this unfold was a real eye opener to us Boeing guys...

We didn't know it at the time, but it was a foreshadowing of how 787 was going to be managed. Harry wanted us to sign on investors as "risk sharing partners" per the MD model. What ensued was the single biggest disaster in the history of The Boeing Company.

We signed on plenty of these "risk sharing partners". And then proceeded to squeeze them so hard, regarding both schedule and cost, that over half of them eventually made the very pragmatic business decision to default on their contracts and pay Boeing the penalties. Well, while in ever deepening trouble because of this trend, the old Boeing guys thought all was not lost - we could simply take what they had so far, find another supplier, and carry on...

Alas, not so fast - we didn't own these designs. We had no rights to them. Some of these "risk sharing partners" were willing to sell what they had developed to Boeing - for an exorbitant cost, of course, recouping their penalties and making a tidy profit in the meantime. Many were not, and simply (quite bitterly) told Boeing to pound sand. And Boeing didn't have the capital to buy the design data from the ones that offered it. This happened more than once on several systems, installations, and assemblies. Years and years of delays and billions in cost over runs later, we now knew the full ramifications of MD's "risk sharing partner" approach.

Originally Posted by IROC

The C-17 was struggling with structural challenges due to its revolutionary use of carbon fiber. The early 90s were tough. John McDonnell was a great guy, but the ironic thing again was that I think McDonnell Douglas was too focused on the technical side and not the financial and they just slipped into the red year after year…. Then came Stonecipher…

Oh, believe me, John McDonnell was laser focused on the financial side. Notoriously the cheapest bastard to ever play the aerospace game. It was his insistence that only government money be spent that killed MD, even long after he was gone. Stonecipher was a Jack Welsh "true believer" to begin with, and he found "heaven" under old man McDonnell's policies.

Originally Posted by IROC

I was in the manned space flight part of the company (Spacelab, mostly) but transitioned to work on Space Station when we merged. Boeing had dropped the ball so badly on the ISS program (zero award fee one year) that McDonnell Douglas basically took over and pulled it back out of the ditch.

Never worked anything but commercial, so I cannot comment on any of this. What years were these?

So, anyway, this unfortunate situation on 787, the billions lost on that program through the disastrous adoption of MD's management philosophies, is what led to the 737 MAX. A 737 replacement (that thing predates 747, from the mid 1960's) was going to be our next project after 787. A brand new, "clean sheet", maybe all composite regional jet. 787 killed any hope of doing that. But Airbus was killing us in that market, so we "had to do something, even if it's wrong"... And boy, was it ever wrong...

Polishing a 50 year old turd, making terrible design decisions with regards to aerodynamics, and hoping to make up for it through computer intervention. The MAX is essentially "fighting itself" the whole time it's flying. These terrible engineering decisions were driven by upper management's policies and the company's lack of funding, squandered on 787.

Those upper managers get all of the glory when things go well. Big bonuses, stock options, all of that. Even if all they did was stay out of the way... Well, they should get all of the "glory" in the face of this kind of failure as well. Their decisions inarguably led directly to all of this. They need to be held accountable. Like in prison for the rest of their lives accountable. It's one of the biggest crimes of modern industry that they, with help from the politicians, have been oh so successful in shielding themselves from that responsibility.

[astrochex]

Well, the C-17 did turn out fine with over 230 sold including FMS.

[Superman]

I have had friends at Boeing and I can read. The jury is in. There is no question the The Boeing Company was a first rate aerospace company and this is mighty easy to prove conclusively. it is just as easy to show that Boeing is now a dangerous company. When do we hold management accountable? Do we NOT do this when a formerly great company is now on the ropes? The buck should stop somewhere.

Watch "Downfall." Lots of details I could share here, but I'll offer this one: Records FINALLY were surrendered by Boeing. The settlement was $2.X billion to avoid criminal prosecution. Apparently Boeing management, knowing pilots would have about ten seconds to figure out and execute a solution, concealed even the existence of the MCAS software system which took control of the aircraft, adamantly refusing to provide training to pilots. Lion Air, owner of the first of the two crashes, begged Boeing for training. Boeing refused. Because......cost.

[group911@aol.co]

Guess you're lucky you don't get car sick too.

Originally Posted by Scott Douglas

Yeah, as a matter of fact I do drive. I get air sickness like nobodies business so it really takes the fun out of going places via plane. My wife refuses to fly anywhere with me because of it too.

[Superman]

Originally Posted by astrochex

Well, the C-17 did turn out fine with over 230 sold including FMS.

*****. Compare MD's contributions to aviation against that of Boeing.

[Jeff Higgins]

Originally Posted by astrochex

Well, the C-17 did turn out fine with over 230 sold including FMS.

Yes, it did. It is, by all accounts, a fantastic airplane. But - its initial per unit cost was pushing $400 million, at the time a 747 or 777 was about $120 million. Back to John McDonnell's guaranteed government contract. No way they could have ever survived the competitive world of commercial aviation like that. It's easy to "excel" when cost is no object, when the customer has bottomless pockets.

[astrochex]

Originally Posted by Superman

*****. Compare MD's contributions to aviation against that of Boeing.

Really, why the vitriol? A comment was made about a C-17 development issue. I was pointing out that the issues were resolved and a lot of tails were sold. The program was a cash cow for years and a key element of Boeings military portfolio.

[astrochex]

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins

Yes, it did. It is, by all accounts, a fantastic airplane. But - its initial per unit cost was pushing $400 million, at the time a 747 or 777 was about $120 million. Back to John McDonnell's guaranteed government contract. No way they could have ever survived the competitive world of commercial aviation like that. It's easy to "excel" when cost is no object, when the customer has bottomless pockets.

Well true, MD did not survive the commercial market.

[zakthor]

Originally Posted by astrochex

Really, why the vitriol? A comment was made about a C-17 development issue. I was pointing out that the issues were resolved and a lot of tails were sold. The program was a cash cow for years and a key element of Boeings military portfolio.

I remember reading about the c17 software as one of the great disaster stories.

After airframe was final (after 2B? spent) the plane was found to be unstable at low speed/high angle of attack which apparently how you land on a short runway. People in charge decided it was a... software problem. They designed a system to prevent plane from ever finding itself in that situation. I guess you can say its a success because they sold a lot but why was the plane unstable to begin with?

Sounds a lot like mcas except you can't blame that the airframe design was 50 years old.

Above was in a software book. I'd love to hear the real story.