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August 25, 2008
Boeing to tighten scrutiny
Parts flaws prompt jetmaker to return to inspecting suppliers directly
Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle) - by Steve Wilhelm Staff Writer
Responding to an increase in delays and significantly flawed parts, Boeing Commercial Airplanes’ quality managers have decided to return to more direct oversight of suppliers.
About a dozen problem companies will be targeted at first, with Boeing inspectors sent out to those companies later this year, said Wayne Brown, director of supplier quality for Boeing Commercial Airplanes.
‘What we’ve been thinking of at Boeing is, we need to have more boots on the ground,” Brown said. “We will have our own Boeing people there, and they will be doing auditing, they will be looking at supplier systems and processes as well as parts, to make sure they are adhering to expectations.”
He said no planes have been delivered to airlines with flawed parts, but the problem has led to delays for the new 787 as well as other models.
The initiative is a bit of an about-face for Boeing, which had been going in a direction of depending on so-called prime contractors, those building the largest assemblies of its airplanes, to monitor the quality of work from suppliers.
These suppliers line up in a hierarchy, with “first-tier” contractors directly supplying the primes, and in turn supplied by second- and third-tier companies. Boeing had been taking that system to its ultimate level with its new 787, with about a dozen primes responsible for making the jet’s fuselage, wings and other major sections, and those primes supported by contractors below them.
But the 787 is now about 18 months late for delivery, and much of the blame has landed on primes that didn’t exercise sufficient oversight of suppliers to make sure they had needed supplies or would have all assemblies completed in time.
“A lot of it has to do with the 787,” Brown said about the new tactic. “We’ve had some issues with second- and third-tier suppliers that had industry oversight certification, but it didn’t quite work. So we decided, ‘OK, we may need to supplement this.’ ”
Brown said Boeing inspectors will directly review some suppliers lower down on the hierarchy, which otherwise would have been monitored only by the higher-level suppliers. He declined to name either specific suppliers that will be the first ones inspected, or how many Boeing people would be tapped to do the work.
Several analysts agreed that Boeing had leaned too far in the direction of depending on suppliers and third-party certifiers to maintain quality.
“The concept of prime contractors focusing on the top end, and trusting everyone else gets everything right, wasn’t a bad idea; it was oversold,” said Richard Aboulafia, aerospace analyst for The Teal Group, outside of Washington, D.C. “Even if suppliers are liable, it’s still your problem at the end of the day.”
Paul Nisbet, president of JSA Research Inc. in Rhode Island, said Boeing’s return to more direct supplier oversight seems appropriate.
“It seemed to be fairly broad across the major subcontractors that they promised things they couldn’t do, and Boeing didn’t know it,” he said. “They found out the hard way. I can see where they need to become more involved, to be sure they know their subcontractors can perform.”
The gold standard for industry certification is the ISO system, which stands for the International Organization for Standardization. Based in Geneva, the ISO body has created an array of quality certification standards including one, AS9100, which is specifically for the aerospace industry, and which is widely used by Boeing and other aerospace companies.
Because the ISO system is globally recognized, it has spawned an industry of independent certifiers who can be hired to make sure that companies meet standards.
As part of its shift toward global sourcing, as exemplified by the 787, Boeing had been moving toward depending on this system of third-party certifiers to make sure that second- and third-tier suppliers were providing perfect parts.
While a decade ago, Boeing employed an army of quality inspectors who checked parts after they were made, the trend across manufacturing has been to make sure each part is correct as it is made. This is done by keeping critical measurements of each part within a predefined acceptable range, a process called statistical process control.
Boeing had moved so far from this inspection model with the 787 that not only was Boeing not inspecting parts made by Boeing itself, it was depending on suppliers to get those parts right without direct oversight.
“Our original business model said, ‘No, we’re not going to have any of that, we’re going to give them designs, we’re going to give them specifications, and parts are going to come to us absolutely perfect,’ ” Brown said. “It didn’t happen.”
Boeing isn’t alone in this problem, and throughout the manufacturing industry, the reality has been dawning that ISO certification doesn’t necessarily mean that parts are being made right, said Luis Solano, president of Trivalent Solutions Inc., a Chicago-based consultant for lean manufacturing and quality systems. He added that many other companies are finding it difficult to hit the right balance between depending on third-party auditors and monitoring supplier quality themselves.
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