Boeing is the corporate embodiment of the Competency Crisis. A lot of people are pointing their fingers at DIE to explain Boeing's vast incompetence across many product lines but the company's problems go back to at least their acquisition of McDonnell Douglas in 1997. When Boeing bought MD, the MD management took over the combined company and brought with it the bean counter oriented management philosophy that meant quarterly growth took precedence over engineering prowess. It's almost impossible to state just how rotten the management is at Boeing.
A sample of their failures:
They are the prime contractor for NASA's SLS rocket. This boondoggle is billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule. If it weren't for the fact that SLS is a jobs program first and rocket program second, it probably would have been canceled. SLS is so badly managed that it caused NASA to move away from cost+ contracting towards fixed cost contracting.
Which leads us to the Starliner. Boeing was one of the winners of the fixed cost NASA Commercial Crew program (along with SpaceX's Dragon). They cannot bring themselves to finish the project and when they launched their prototype, it nearly lost control on ascent and wasted too much thruster fuel to even dock and also nearly burned up in the atmosphere on descent. Both of these were due to software problems. Starliner is such an albatross that it's the reason for Boeing's poor financials this quarter. Boeing has now sworn off fixed cost contracts.
The infamous software glitches in their 737 MAX program, leading to the loss of two aircraft.
Boeing has announced that they won't develop a new airliner for the next 10 years. This is a huge problem for them because Airbus is developing new aircraft and Boeing will continue to fall behind. Airbus is already taking marketshare away from Boeing and I expect the Chinese to do so as well by 2034.
Boeing is the corporate embodiment of the Competency Crisis. A lot of people are pointing their fingers at DIE to explain Boeing's vast incompetence across many product lines but the company's problems go back to at least their acquisition of McDonnell Douglas in 1997. When Boeing bought MD, the MD management took over the combined company and brought with it the bean counter oriented management philosophy that meant quarterly growth took precedence over engineering prowess. It's almost impossible to state just how rotten the management is at Boeing.
A sample of their failures: