Boeing Identifies Process Control Issue; Key Execs to Step Down

Aerospace Aviation process control Boeing

In what has been called “a broad management shakeup,” a number of key executives will be exiting Boeing, including CEO Dave Calhoun, stepping down at the end of 2024; Larry Kellner, chairman of the board, resigning and will not stand for reelection at Boeing’s annual meeting in May; and Stan Deal, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, leaving the company effective immediately.

All of this “come as airlines and regulators have been increasing calls for major changes at the company after a host of quality and manufacturing flaws on Boeing planes,” according to reporting from CNBC on Monday. “Scrutiny intensified after a Jan. 5 accident, when a door plug blew out of a nearly new Boeing 737 Max 9 minutes into an Alaska Airlines flight.”

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In a letter to employees on Monday, Calhoun wrote, “As you all know, the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 accident was a watershed moment for Boeing. We must continue to respond to this accident with humility and complete transparency. We also must inculcate a total commitment to safety and quality at every level of our company. The eyes of the world are on us, and I know we will come through this moment a better company, building on all the learnings we accumulated as we worked together to rebuild Boeing over the last number of years.”

In the middle of last week, Boeing identified an “area of focus” around the Jan. 5 accident. Referring to the accident at Bank of America’s Boeing company conference, CFO Brian West said, “And one area that we’re focused on in particular is something called 'traveled work.'”

According to Boeing’s internal documents, traveled work refers to tasks that are “delayed and/or completed in a factory location other than what was originally planned.”

Yahoo! Finance stated, “With the 737 MAX jet, Boeing was accepting fuselages and assemblies from Spirit AeroSystems, with workers noting that assemblies were not conforming to what Boeing was expecting, resulting in the assemblies being used in manufacturing then repaired after the fact.”

In Boeing’s internal report, the company said “that traveled work resulted in tasks taking longer to compete in terms of labor hours, and that incomplete work can interfere with its ability to complete other planned work, causing cascading delays.”

As federal investigators noted in the Wall Street Journal reporting, with the 737-MAX, even though “Boeing workers apparently spotted these issues immediately when fuselages arrived from Spirit AeroSystems, It turns out Boeing didn’t fix the issues right away, and the 737 continued on to the next workstation.

“When Boeing crews completed the repair 19 days later, the crews failed to replace four bolts on a plug door they had opened to do the job, resulting in the Alaska Airlines incident.”

According to West, ““Starting on March 1 of this year, we will no longer travel work between Wichita and our fuselage supplier [Spirit AeroSystems] and Renton [Boeing assembly plant],” West said. “It had been going on too long. So now we will only accept a fully conforming fuselage from Spirit, which means in the near term, there might be variability of supply.”