Dream Liner
Corporocide is a new word for death by Spin Doctors and incompetent management. There is a clear pattern apparent here yet to be adequately addressed.
The Boeing 777 is now a mature and superb product (Although still having its teething troubles – consider the RR ice crystal thing). It was however years late and associated with serious cost overruns.
The A 380 similarly ran into serious trouble and was also years late and a huge embarrassment to Airbus.
The fact that such huge projects run into this sort of trouble is a clear indication of a major problem and it is up to management to find the answers.
In the case of Boeing it is said by many to be a matter of denial, shoot the messenger and technical ignorance or even worse, contempt on the part of Management for all others.
Looking back over the history of groups like the Skunk Works of Lockheed with a history of superb performance in delivering on time and on budget (even early and under budget) high Tec project it seems obvious that there is a way to avoid these problems.
If you think this is unfair consider what is involved in the latest delay of the first flight of the Dreamliner. What sort of management can announce a first flight on a given date and then delay yet again after a stream of delays years long?? Who is it that does not know what and why?
The various bloggs of disgruntled employees and generally interested parties have some consistent themes very much to the point. There are some total gems in the blogs eg very descriptive and seemingly accurate “MacDonnell Douglas used Boeing money to buy Boeing” and another “The management of MacD bit Boeing severely before finally dying”.
So what are the lessons? One is that stratospheric salaries do not buy common sense and another surely is that Management as a specialty has a long way to go before it is a Science and that maybe applied psychopathology has a good dealt to offer. To some extent we have the situation where the monkey is in charge of the cookie jar.
Lets see how Boeing gets out of this one. I am sure they will but who will be hung out to dry??
July 15th, 2009 at 12:02 am
In all types of industries there are similar problems, maybe not quite so media attractive but nevertheless similar. The problem is businesses today are run by accountants (bean-counters). They are great with absolutes like their beloved numbers but are out of their depth went they have to deal with the real world.
Bean-counters are very important to a business. All the marketing and engineering activity would more often than not lead to loses and not profits if no one controlled the costs and revenues of a business, but dear ‘bean-counters’ you are not the ones who undertstand best what is happening in the business. Those are the engineers, both R & D and production, and the marketing and sales guys.
I am certain that insiders know that the problems both at Boeing & Airbus were caused by bum planning because the bean-counters dictated to the guys doing the work impossible time frames.
Barrie Anderson.
July 18th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Hi Barrie. Yes I can only agree. Part of why I made the post is to increase the pressure on the bean counters and raise the consciousness of the shareholders about how the over view must never be lost and process always questioned.
Cheers
Michael