Boeing admits 787 strategy flawed

On Nov 6, 11:16 am, Paul kgyy wrote:
There's also the possibility that Boeing simply overlooked the fact
that companies always have "standard" ways of doing certain things,
and neglected to be sufficiently detailed in their specifications.

No, here's just one example of what happened:

On the 777, the AIMS (Airplane Information Management System)
architecture and processing requirements were defined 100% by
engineers at Boeing (many are friends of mine). Honeywell, who did
the AIMS system, knew what the total MIPS requirements were for the
total processing taskload right at the start because Boeing engineers
were able to leverage past metrics and did a good job of projecting
the requirements for the new software and put it in the system
specifications. After all, they were the ones defining what all the
software tasks were, and could see the big picture and manage it.

For the 787, Smiths was given the task of writing the specifications
for the processor and doing the design of the core processor module
for the main avionics sytem, and other vendors (Honeywell, Collins,
etc.) wrote code to do their software functions that execute on the
Smiths hardware. Boeing didn't own the requirments for this
processing taskload, and allowed Smiths to own it. Smiths way
underestimated the total software taskload (didn't play well with
others, and vice versa), and underdesigned the CPM. Now, they are
having to put in twice the number of processor modules to handle the
taskload, which is doubling the power, doubling the weight, and eating
up all the planned growth margin for the system in the intitial
delivery configuration.

Like I said before, its all about doing a good job of top-level
requirements, integration, and vendor management, and Boeing has
traditionally done a world-class job of it, but on this airplane,
management thought that they could push more of this task on the
vendors with unfortunate results. IMHO its best for the system
integrator to own the system requirements, system design, system
integration, and vendor coordination tasks. Trusting this to the
vendors who are inherently in competition with each other is not the
wisest decision to make. The vendors' strength has always been the
detailed implementation of the requirements in hardware and software.

On Nov 6, 4:32 pm, GB wrote:
[snip]
What concerns me most is that little old me - never been near an
aeroplane manufacturing gig in my life - spends a couple of years
at manglement school and *none* of this stuff at Boeing is of
*any* surprise to me, and yet a multi-billion dollar manufacturing
organisation that /should/ be apple to afford all of the best
manglement types that money can buy still seems to be struggling
with basic textbook level manufacturing management issues. It's
bizarre... maybe the frogs are better at making aeroplanes after
all?

I think the point you are overlooking is that in a design
program,
where parts have to be optimized in concert, outsourcing much of it
won't result in any cost or efficiency based savings because the
amount of oversight required will absorb any potential savings.
Airplanes
require a significant amount of interactive optimization that is hard
to
achieve with multiple suppliers. You can outsource relative "stand
alone"
components with narrow performance requirements. Tires, brakes,
to some extent seating and interior components, etc. can all be
designed
relatively separately from the aircraft. However, primary structure,
interconnected hydrolic systems, electrical systems, etc are difficult
to develop as stand alone systems. Engines have always been a
tough place in the design process and most aircraft are in effect
designed
"around" the engines. The engines actually are well ahead of the
aircraft in the development cycle because they will tend to define
what
can be achieved with the rest of the aircraft. Even at that, however,
there
is very tight connections between the engine developer and the
airframer.
And in the end, virtually every major aircraft will go through an "re-
engine"
phase in its life, something which is planned for up front.

All of which is to say that the engineers know perfectly well how
to
manage an integration project on this scale, and they have the numbers
to know where savings can be made by outsourcing, and where they
might as well be kept "in house". Some times one just has to admit
that the engineers know what they are talking about, and the
management
is just blowing smoke.

On Nov 6, 7:01 pm, GB wrote:
wrote in news:1194387439.920316.182900@
50g2000hsm.googlegroups.com:

This makes it clear why your response was so brain-dead and ill-
informed... management school, that says it all!

Well, it's good to see that you've taken the time to deliver a
detailed analysis of exactly which bits were "brain dead" and
"ill informed". Thanks for that.

I stand by my previous statements. You're whining because you
don't like change and because you think the world owes you
something.

GB
--
.sig

I'm doing nothing of the sort, neither whining nor complaining. I
don't work for Boeing anymore, and am only offering observations on
what is going on there.

You are offering up nothing but a bunch of psychobabble pablum that
you are regurgitating from the lame management classes that you took.
The "who moved my cheese" crap is just a poor way of trying to soft
sell layoffs and job cuts rather than just being honest with people.

The problem with the latest crop of US management is that they are a
bunch of imagination deficient clones of the paradigm du jour that is
being peddled in college business schools. If you really want a
dynamic workforce, you need to learn how to truly motivate people and
stop treating them like expenses that need to be controlled, which
seems to be the current philosophy. Managers tend to be way overpaid
for what they do, while individual contributors who make things happen
are getting a smaller and smaller slice of the corporate pie.

One of the latest favorite corporate fads is to use forced ranking so
that you always have a bottom dwelling person in the rankings who will
lose their job unless they "improve", regardless of how well they
actually are doing their job. Its all relative to their peers, and
the difference can be slight (HP, GE, etc). Often it becomes
impossible for them to improve their status, so they get shoved out
the door and the corporation winds up wasting money on recruiting a
replacement, workforce training, etc. etc. This technique creates an
environment of political maneuvering, backbiting, and discourages team
efforts. I suppose they have been teaching this gem of a management
technique in school lately as well; the Jack Welch school of
management.

No, I'm just glad that I'm an engineer who actually contributes real
goods to the betterment of society, and not some parasitic management
type who thinks that they have all the answers and love to lecture on
the crap that they were spoon fed in their "management school". Lets
see you solve a multi-variable differential equation. No? Stick with
cheese then...

Nom, they didn't. Which makes you a liar.


Bertie

On Nov 7, 12:26 am, GB wrote:
wrote in news:1194410084.411339.86030
@e9g2000prf.googlegroups.com:

I'm doing nothing of the sort, neither whining nor complaining.

OK, maybe those words mean something different where you come
from. What do you call "whining and complaining" in your parts?

I don't work for Boeing anymore, and am only offering observations
on what is going on there.

So, I was right on that point.

You are offering up nothing but a bunch of psychobabble pablum that
you are regurgitating from the lame management classes that you took.

An interesting interpretation, but not an accurate one.

The "who moved my cheese" crap is just a poor way of trying to soft
sell layoffs and job cuts rather than just being honest with people.

Ah, I see, you must be American. I shall in future, for the benefit
of you and your ilk, raise my right hand in the air when I am being
facetious, sarcastic, ironic or otherwise taking the ****. I hope
that makes it easier for you.

The problem with the latest crop of US management is that they are a
bunch of imagination deficient clones of the paradigm du jour that is
being peddled in college business schools.

No, that's absolutely not the case. In fact, we spend a lot of time
in manglement school looking at the "latest crop of US management",
observing what a bunch of useless fvcktards they are, and figuring out
how to send our *next* batch of graduates out to clean up the messes
the current twits have made.

If you really want a
dynamic workforce, you need to learn how to truly motivate people and
stop treating them like expenses that need to be controlled, which
seems to be the current philosophy.

That's what was taught in manglement school twenty years ago, yes.
Things have moved on just a little bit since then. Now we teach our
students how to truly motivate people rather than treating them like
expenses that need to be controlled.

I find it particularly interesting that you assume that the things
that sixty and seventy year old people with no formal business education
are doing what we teach in manglement school now. The real problem, I
guess, with being as uninformed as you clearly are is that you end up
making a right goose of yourself, running about with your foot in your
mouth all the time.

Managers tend to be way overpaid
for what they do, while individual contributors who make things happen
are getting a smaller and smaller slice of the corporate pie.

I recognise that, it's bitterness. Common amongst people who can't
cope with change.

One of the latest favorite corporate fads is to use forced ranking so
that you always have a bottom dwelling person in the rankings who will
lose their job unless they "improve", regardless of how well they
actually are doing their job.

You know, you should take a very close look at the employment contracts
you've signed. If you keep making statements like this, one ex employer
or another is going to wise up to the time machine you've got in your
basement and they're going to demand you hand it over.

Its all relative to their peers, and
the difference can be slight (HP, GE, etc). Often it becomes
impossible for them to improve their status, so they get shoved out
the door and the corporation winds up wasting money on recruiting a
replacement, workforce training, etc. etc. This technique creates an
environment of political maneuvering, backbiting, and discourages team
efforts.

More uninformed bull****. Maybe this is how things really work in
America. Maybe this is why we spend so much time using American
businesses as examples of what not to do.

I suppose they have been teaching this gem of a management
technique in school lately as well; the Jack Welch school of
management.

You ought to spend less time believing what you read in airport
bookshops too. That's a road to nowhere if I've ever seen one.

No, I'm just glad that I'm an engineer who actually contributes real
goods to the betterment of society,

Ahhh, an engineer with a closed mind. A card carrying member of
the TWU too, I'll bet. That explains a lot!

(I particularly like the bit where you assume that I am not an
engineer!)

and not some parasitic management
type who thinks that they have all the answers and love to lecture on
the crap that they were spoon fed in their "management school".

Actually, *this* is one of the things that we *do* teach in manglement
school: people who can't think outside the box, people who are unable
to consider that there might be more than one true way, people who
are unprepared to play nice with others... those folks are a cancer and
they must go.

Maybe that's why you're not at Boeing any more? Maybe that's why you're
still 'just' an engineer. Maybe you should have paid a little more
attention during the four compulsory business/management units that you
did in your engineering degree? You know there's a reason we make you
do those classes that you perceive as "irrelevant": so you can learn
how the other half works and work with them 'cos if you spend the rest
of your career fighting them, it's gonna be a short career.

Lets see you solve a multi-variable differential equation. No?

I particularly like the bit where you assume that I am not an engineer!

Stick with cheese then...

That one really did sail *right* over your head, didn't it.

One of my very best undergraduate students this semester is an engineer
(well, he will be one soon) doing the compulsory business/management
bits of his engineering degree. He sits up the front of my manglement
classes and makes reasoned contributions on all sorts of "bull****"
like personality and "irrelevant" corporate cultures and "useless"
practices like recognising that different types of people are
motivated in different ways and "crap" like dismantling deep corporate
hierarchies to remove layers of management and get the people who do
the work closer to the people who make the decisions. He's better at
it than most of the pure business students. He'll become an excellent
engineer, and his with ability to keep an open mind and to look at
situations from multiple points of view and act appropriately will make
him eminently promotable. You should keep an eye out for him, he's
likely to end up being your boss pretty quickly.

Best of luck with those multi-variable differential equations. The
world around you has changed, but the equations are still the same
as you rote-learned in 'college'. It's your closed mind that's holding
you back.

GB
--
.sig

LOL! Man, you really think you really must have a weak ego to feel
the need to post a message like that on usenet proclaiming your
superiority, to make erroneous assumptions about who you are talking
to, and to try to criticize based on zero information. You are WAY
off the mark.

The fact that you are touting "who moved my cheese" tells me you don't
really grasp what management is all about.

I have wasted enough time on you, that much is clear.

wrote in message
oups.com...
On Nov 7, 12:26 am, GB wrote:
wrote in news:1194410084.411339.86030
@e9g2000prf.googlegroups.com:

I'm doing nothing of the sort, neither whining nor complaining.

OK, maybe those words mean something different where you come
from. What do you call "whining and complaining" in your parts?

I don't work for Boeing anymore, and am only offering observations
on what is going on there.

So, I was right on that point.

You are offering up nothing but a bunch of psychobabble pablum that
you are regurgitating from the lame management classes that you took.

An interesting interpretation, but not an accurate one.

The "who moved my cheese" crap is just a poor way of trying to soft
sell layoffs and job cuts rather than just being honest with people.

Ah, I see, you must be American. I shall in future, for the benefit
of you and your ilk, raise my right hand in the air when I am being
facetious, sarcastic, ironic or otherwise taking the ****. I hope
that makes it easier for you.

The problem with the latest crop of US management is that they are a
bunch of imagination deficient clones of the paradigm du jour that is
being peddled in college business schools.

No, that's absolutely not the case. In fact, we spend a lot of time
in manglement school looking at the "latest crop of US management",
observing what a bunch of useless fvcktards they are, and figuring out
how to send our *next* batch of graduates out to clean up the messes
the current twits have made.

If you really want a
dynamic workforce, you need to learn how to truly motivate people and
stop treating them like expenses that need to be controlled, which
seems to be the current philosophy.

That's what was taught in manglement school twenty years ago, yes.
Things have moved on just a little bit since then. Now we teach our
students how to truly motivate people rather than treating them like
expenses that need to be controlled.

I find it particularly interesting that you assume that the things
that sixty and seventy year old people with no formal business education
are doing what we teach in manglement school now. The real problem, I
guess, with being as uninformed as you clearly are is that you end up
making a right goose of yourself, running about with your foot in your
mouth all the time.

Managers tend to be way overpaid
for what they do, while individual contributors who make things happen
are getting a smaller and smaller slice of the corporate pie.

I recognise that, it's bitterness. Common amongst people who can't
cope with change.

One of the latest favorite corporate fads is to use forced ranking so
that you always have a bottom dwelling person in the rankings who will
lose their job unless they "improve", regardless of how well they
actually are doing their job.

You know, you should take a very close look at the employment contracts
you've signed. If you keep making statements like this, one ex employer
or another is going to wise up to the time machine you've got in your
basement and they're going to demand you hand it over.

Its all relative to their peers, and
the difference can be slight (HP, GE, etc). Often it becomes
impossible for them to improve their status, so they get shoved out
the door and the corporation winds up wasting money on recruiting a
replacement, workforce training, etc. etc. This technique creates an
environment of political maneuvering, backbiting, and discourages team
efforts.

More uninformed bull****. Maybe this is how things really work in
America. Maybe this is why we spend so much time using American
businesses as examples of what not to do.

I suppose they have been teaching this gem of a management
technique in school lately as well; the Jack Welch school of
management.

You ought to spend less time believing what you read in airport
bookshops too. That's a road to nowhere if I've ever seen one.

No, I'm just glad that I'm an engineer who actually contributes real
goods to the betterment of society,

Ahhh, an engineer with a closed mind. A card carrying member of
the TWU too, I'll bet. That explains a lot!

(I particularly like the bit where you assume that I am not an
engineer!)

and not some parasitic management
type who thinks that they have all the answers and love to lecture on
the crap that they were spoon fed in their "management school".

Actually, *this* is one of the things that we *do* teach in manglement
school: people who can't think outside the box, people who are unable
to consider that there might be more than one true way, people who
are unprepared to play nice with others... those folks are a cancer and
they must go.

Maybe that's why you're not at Boeing any more? Maybe that's why you're
still 'just' an engineer. Maybe you should have paid a little more
attention during the four compulsory business/management units that you
did in your engineering degree? You know there's a reason we make you
do those classes that you perceive as "irrelevant": so you can learn
how the other half works and work with them 'cos if you spend the rest
of your career fighting them, it's gonna be a short career.

Lets see you solve a multi-variable differential equation. No?

I particularly like the bit where you assume that I am not an engineer!

Stick with cheese then...

That one really did sail *right* over your head, didn't it.

One of my very best undergraduate students this semester is an engineer
(well, he will be one soon) doing the compulsory business/management
bits of his engineering degree. He sits up the front of my manglement
classes and makes reasoned contributions on all sorts of "bull****"
like personality and "irrelevant" corporate cultures and "useless"
practices like recognising that different types of people are
motivated in different ways and "crap" like dismantling deep corporate
hierarchies to remove layers of management and get the people who do
the work closer to the people who make the decisions. He's better at
it than most of the pure business students. He'll become an excellent
engineer, and his with ability to keep an open mind and to look at
situations from multiple points of view and act appropriately will make
him eminently promotable. You should keep an eye out for him, he's
likely to end up being your boss pretty quickly.

Best of luck with those multi-variable differential equations. The
world around you has changed, but the equations are still the same
as you rote-learned in 'college'. It's your closed mind that's holding
you back.

GB
--
.sig

LOL! Man, you really think you really must have a weak ego to feel
the need to post a message like that on usenet proclaiming your
superiority, to make erroneous assumptions about who you are talking
to, and to try to criticize based on zero information. You are WAY
off the mark.

The fact that you are touting "who moved my cheese" tells me you don't
really grasp what management is all about.

I have wasted enough time on you, that much is clear.

Dean - sometimes you strike it lucky - occasionally GB can come up with a
sensible rebuttal.
Mate - you are incredibly unlucky. So am I! What an amazing co-incidence.

Perhaps his address as displayed at the top of this post is a hint on his
true self - kickindanuts.threefiddy.com
Now if that isn't an example of classic management theory then I am lost for
words .....

John

(Sorry - I felt an uncontrollable desire to sign off)

Gig 601XL Builder writes:

Let's keep one thing in mind. Much of the reason for outsourcing for Boeing
is to make foreign governments happy when it comes time to buy the plane.

Yup. That's the overwhelming reason. It works almost as well as a bribe, and
it's legal. Unfortunately, it produces an inferior product.

The reality is that top managers are born, not made, and they are in limited
supply. No management school can change that. They're are many heavily
educated but talent-free managers in the business world, and that's the real
problem.

Mxsmanic wrote:
Gig 601XL Builder writes:

Let's keep one thing in mind. Much of the reason for outsourcing for
Boeing is to make foreign governments happy when it comes time to
buy the plane.

Yup. That's the overwhelming reason. It works almost as well as a
bribe, and it's legal. Unfortunately, it produces an inferior
product.

No that is just a nation taking care of their own. They know as well as
Boeing and anyone else that earns any of this stuff known as money, that you
have to sell an item in order to make any money.

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
news
The reality is that top managers are born, not made, and they are in
limited
supply. No management school can change that. They're are many heavily
educated but talent-free managers in the business world, and that's the
real
problem.

I agree but would take a slightly less absolute view on "the born, not
made".

Certainly some people simply because of certain personality traits will
naturally evolve into excellent managers, even with little formal education
and zero management training - the "born" category.

As you state: some people, despite extensive education and training, will
never make the grade. It is not that they're a failure in life; they just
need to be employed in a job where management skills are not a
pre-requisite.

Most people lie in between these extremes and have potential for
improvement. A few will undoubtedly become top managers.

John