Hot Topic: Lean Times

Up front - this discourse might wander but the message is becoming loud and clear. Aircraft manufacturers must adopt lean manufacturing and foster global relationships if they want to compete in the airplane sales free-for-all that will no doubt follow today's airline profits. A recent discussion with a Boeing manager cleared up a lot of the misunderstood reasoning about the Chicago plane makers global partnering initiatives. In the past, while Airbus sought suppliers, Boeing focused on partners. There must be a difference because Airbus, under present management, seeks the global, risk-sharing solutions that the B777 and B787 have successfully employed… at least so far. We were told the differences between suppliers and partners are many - here are a few:

• Partners are in it for the long term. Negotiations with other suppliers simply to reduce cost are not the norm.
• Partners assume more responsibility in the design, build, and product flow. In other words, the partner takes more ownership of the whole process.
• Partners are less internally goal oriented and more focused on their customer and airplane delivery process.
• There will usually be less partners than suppliers and they will perform more work…work outsourced from a Boeing or Airbus. This concept reduces the number of part suppliers needed and reduces costs at the same time and lets the partner move up the value chain.

As one Boeing manager many years ago told us, "Toyota taught us a lot about the manufacturing business and we found that the rules they laid down were completely applicable to cars as well as planes. For example, consider a partner delivering a system instead of multiple parts provided by suppliers. Letting the partner do what they do best (develop systems) keeps the expertise where it belongs (Can you think of violations of this principle in the past IFE'rs?) And while we are on Toyota, it is well known that Boeing began talking to Toyota in the early nineties because the automaker made the highest quality cars with the fewest defects, while using less inventory, fewer man-hours, and did so with half the manufacturing space. This is why the B777 was developed and produced under precepts developed by Toyota (definitely a gradual process). "The Toyota Way" built-in quality, eliminated wasted resources and time, found low cost solutions to ever demanding inputs of technology, produced profitably in small quantities, and turned every employee into a quality inspector. Boeing liked what they saw and two (probably more) mantras fell out - Lean Manufacturing and Global Partnering.

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