Commentary: It’s time for Boeing to talk. To itself.

On July 9, 2007, ZA001, or what was later to become ZA001 wrapped up
one final photo op for the morning television news shows. The aircraft sat at
the head of the 747 line gleaming brand new. Once the camera lights
dimmed, the 787 was rolled back to Building 40-26 and the real work to prepare for flight had begun, a task that continues two years later. White
plastic decals were removed from the wings, painted foil covering
unfilled fastener holes were removed, the full extent of the show N787BA
had been prepared for the day prior could no longer remain unreconciled
against the work that would be required to make it fly.

Those working directly with the airplane knew full well that the
first 787 was far from its maiden sortie, but why pronouncements like
this from program vice president Mike Bair at the Paris Air Show in
June 2007?

“The aircraft will be structurally complete at
rollout but will still have systems, ducting, wiring and similar work
to be done before first flight. When those tasks are completed, it will
be powered up and proceed to ground test before it flies.”

Vought would confirm publicly a year later that the first aft fuselage
barrel was only 16% structurally complete at the time of shipment to
Everett.

At the time the roll out festivities came to a close, August 27th
was the target for first flight, one month and 18 days later. What
followed is well documented.

Almost exactly two years later, Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Scott
Carson said assuredly (June 15) to the gathered crowd of reporters at the Paris
Air Show: “We remain absolutely committed to our forecast that it will
fly in the second quarter of this year. If you count the way I do, that
means within the next two weeks roughly.”

Carson would also later tell CNN at the show, “The technical issues are largely all behind us.”

Just over a week later, Boeing revealed the extent of the weakness in the wing to body join.

Yet, in that statement, there lies a question of how it got to that
point? How could an executive near the head of a Fortune 50 company make such a statement? Was it just a breakdown in communication? Or something
more telling about the state of the program? The information, or the gravity of the information, didn’t
flow where and when it needed to.

Mr. Carson, in responding to questions on the delay announcement said:

When we were at Paris last week we had been through the preliminary analysis of the data and were of a mind that the airplane could enter flight test with a credible flight test envelope as we worked relatively minor modifications. The work done by the team through the week last week narrowed the envelope to the point where on Friday we determined that to fly would be such a small envelope for us that it would be an interesting exercise in having the airplane in the air but not particularly useful in terms of preparing the airplane for certification. So at that point is when we made the call to delay the process, identify the fix, test the fix, install the fix, and then enter a flight test program that is fully robust.

A program built on global transparency did not live up to its own early
expectation and the lessons continue to be manifested in changes like
the 50% acquisition of Global Aeronautica in March 2008 and the
establishment of the Production Integration Center, a mission control nervous
system for the global supply chain that became operational in December
2008, and most recently this week with the Vought South Carolina buy
out.

Many program sources have suggested privately that as Boeing has
improved its visibility outward, it still struggles with communicating
with itself. Good news flows freely to the top, yet the bad news is not
elevated to an appropriate level. They talk of a ‘kill the messenger’
culture has established itself inside the program, where the push to
move ahead and show marked progress is often in conflict with requiring
the often uncomfortable task of ensuring that ‘power’ has ‘truth’ in
its hands to make good decisions and communicate progress outwardly.

During my time in Paris, I received a message from South Carolina on Tuesday morning (June 16) that told of “emergent first flight
issues” with no other details available. Another message from
Washington, just a day later (June 17) suggested a rumor about possible
delamination in the wingbox stringers, but the source added, “it is
just a rumor to my knowledge.”

From the point of view of covering the program, those rumors were
almost impossible to substantiate. Separating the wheat from the chaff,
takes a fine tooth comb that appears much more difficult when nine time zones away.

Yet, if this outside observer could know of these two hints a week
before the delay announcement, how was this information flowing inside
the company?

The story is far from unfamiliar and Boeing is far from the first aerospace company to face such a challenge.

At the height of the A380 delays facing Airbus, broken communication,
both internal and external, drew the ire of airline customers, Wall
Street and the media. On June 20, 2006, Flight International weighed in
on the situation:

[Airbus Chief Operating Officer John] Leahy says it was the “low-tech stuff” that got them – the wiring harnesses
– but this will hardly reassure the customers. More
worrying is how Airbus management was apparently unable to hear the timebomb ticking in the A380’s Jean-Luc Lagardère
assembly plant a few kilometres from its Toulouse
headquarters. Especially given that the join-up of
sub-assemblies for new aircraft had been on hold for two months and working
parties were furiously trying to rectify problems on completed aircraft.

The
problem of communication not only impacts the outward credibility of
the company’s leadership, but how Boeing’s own employees view those
running the ship of state. If information isn’t able to flow freely to
the top without perception of fear of reprisal or penalty, then any
report of information being disseminated from the top down may lack the
credibility that the leadership needs to motivate employees to solve
the challenges facing the program.

A 2006 speech by Boeing CEO James McNerney given in the wake of the US Air Force tanker scandal tackled this culture head on:

So then we had to ask ourselves some really tough questions: Were these
lapses symptomatic of a larger issue with our corporate culture?…Did our people feel
confident enough to speak up about ethical concerns without fear of
retaliation?

McNerney discussed the solution to the problem:

To make sure everyone understands this, I think that you have to create
a work environment that encourages people to talk about the tough
issues–business- or ethics-related–and to make the right decisions
when they find themselves at the crossroads between hitting their
numbers for the quarter and stepping forward when there’s a problem.

Boeing should ask itself if McNerney’s vision has yet to become a reality.