[Jeff Higgins]

Geez Mike, what an embarrassing cluster fark. Not surprising, though. It always seemed to me that Boeing sent all of their real "winners" to the government programs. Veritable "island of misfit toys (engineers)". I think that was driven by the nature of the way in which they were compensated by the customer - all government contracts were "guaranteed", also known as "cost plus". In other words, it didn't really matter how much was spent, compensation was a guaranteed amount above whatever that was. The commercial side, of course, didn't have that luxury. The commercial side very much had to perform, in a very competitive market, and against a competitor - Airbus - who had the luxury of significant backing from member nation's governments.

The management practices developed under this "cost plus" model eventually crept into the commercial side at MD. They were firmly entrenched, and had caused MD to fail by the time of the merger. Post merger, those practices replaced the decades old, tried and true (although not very profitable for the "stakeholders") practices employed by Boeing.