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Originally Posted by IROC
As a "heritage McDonnell Douglas" guy, I can say that there is a difference of opinion on this subject within current Boeing employees...  |
Yes, there is. The former Mickie-Dee's employees have a grossly overestimated view of themselves, particularly their "engineers" (who in reality were no more than "project managers") by then. Everyone else in the industry agrees - the problems at Boeing are a direct result of adopting MD management philosophies and managers, wherein engineers quit designing and picked up project managing instead. Google "adopting the practices of a failed aerospace company" (or something like that) for some enlightening reading.
Quote:
Originally Posted by IROC
I was at one of the few McDonnell Douglas/Boeing locations where immediately after the "merger" employees from both companies began working side-by-side. McDonnell Douglas was doomed by a lack of cash reserves and a shrinking market share.
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A lack of cash flow and dwindling (actually non-existant by then) market share brought about by the extreme risk-adverse culture that Aboulafia mentions. No one's fault but MD's - their corporate culture led directly to that sad state of affairs. Every industry analyst that has ever bothered to comment on that situation is in agreement.
Hell, by that time, McDonnel had taken one previously proud, productive, civilian sector manufacturer - Douglas - and ruined it with his miserly, government contract dependent, penny pinching ways. He would never invest his own money - only taxpayers' money. That's what killed MD as a viable commercial airplane manufacurer. That, and trying to use its remaining "engineers" as project managers instead.
Quote:
Originally Posted by IROC
Boeing was being run by ludicrously high-paid idiots - at least at our location. Boeing engineers were making about 30% more than equivalent McDonnell Douglas guys and were so hated by local NASA management that many McDonnell Douglas guys were moved into management positions on Boeing contracts right away.
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Actually, by then, there were no "equivalent MD guys" - whoever was left there as an "engineer" had been turned into a project manager. All the guys who really wanted to be (and had the werewithal to be) design engineers had already left.
So of course those who were left saw the Boeing
engineers as "idiots" - they couldn't understand what they were doing, why it took so long, and why it costs so much. That's a very (all too) common view of engineering work from the outside looking in; and a view that got MD into the predicament it was in then, and subsequently allowed MD management to force Boeing into its current situation.
And that's where the failure began, as chronicled by many industry experts - when Mickie-Dee's management was given charge over Boeing engineers. The tail wagging the dog in the most engineering-intensive undertaking mankind has ever tackled. We all knew it was wrong, and where it would lead.
MD had a long, sordid history of undervaluing engineering. They saw it as just another commodity, that could be purchased off the shelves of a world market. Maybe the "talent" they had at the time led them to that conclusion, or maybe that attitude led to the "talent" they were left with - a real "chicken or the egg" question. But I digress...
They were the first to significantly outsource engineering. We simply never did that at Boeing, until MD bean counters came in. Prior to that, Boeing had always valued the engineering culture that was developed here, and understood that it could not be matched anywhere. That culture has always attracted the cream of the crop, because engineers knew they would be working not only with other engineers, but more importantly,
for other engineers. The rest wound up at places like, well, MD - where they didn't "engineer" a damn thing, but turned into "project managers" riding herd over incompetent suppliers, wondering why engineers are such "idiots"...