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Going for
F
AN IMPRESSIVE LEAN CRUSADE or the first time since the turn of the
millennium, business can truly be said to be
HAS ENSURED THAT THE booming for Boeing. It is a far cry from the
PRODUCTION MELTDOWNS OF THE dark days of the 1990s when a rush to
NINETIES ARE NOW A THING OF introduce new models in the face of
competition from Airbus caused major
THE PAST AT BOEING. manufacturing problems, escalating lead times and a loss
of confidence in the business.
By Mark Venables It is a while now since it could report being neck and
neck with its great rival for new aircraft orders and
with the exciting 787 aircraft capturing market
interest, a company that two years ago appeared dead
on its feet is finally getting back to full speed. It is not
just aircraft customers who agree that the Chicago-
based aircraft manufacturer is once again in full stride
but the capricious financial markets would appear to
concur. Shares in the company have rebounded after
the plunge early this decade that wiped out almost
two-thirds of their value and currently sit close to a
four-year high.
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Lean Some would point to the arrival of Scott Carson late
last year to head up the sales team, together with a
more flexible pricing policy, which has enabled
Boeing to snatch some orders from its European rival,
as the catalyst for this upturn. But the company has
always insisted that it will not sell aircraft at a loss
simply to grab market share and that its ability to offer
flexible pricing comes from the renewed focus on lean
manufacturing that has lowered costs.
FROM HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
Boeing’s improvement activities started in the late
1970s and were primarily focused around Quality
Circles, a management tool similar to Kaizen Blitzes
that was developed in Japan by Kaoru Ishikawa. As
trends evolved within the manufacturing sector this
was replaced by Total Quality Management (TQM) in
the early 1980s before they jumped on the World-Class
Competitiveness bandwagon at the end of the decade.
“That was the beginning of our look at how Toyota
Lean manufacturing
does things,” Mike Herscher, Boeing’s Renton factory
manager, says. “We studied that kind of methodology
in a rudimentary way in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
About 1995 we started to understand a bit more about
what the Toyota Production System was all about.”
The real impetus for lean manufacturing came from
the assembly line meltdowns at Boeing’s two main
manufacturing facilities around Seattle – Renton,
which assembles the 737 and, until recently the 757, and
the larger Everett facility, which looks after the twin
aisle products the 747 and 777, as well as the upcoming
787 Dreamliner project.
“Some might say it was a bit of a ‘perfect storm’
with our supply base. We had parts problems, people
problems and fell really behind, missed deliveries; it
was a really difficult time for us,” Steve Westby, vice
president of manufacturing concedes. “But we
managed to get the engine going; to recover and get
back in sequence and we carried forward that
momentum and decided to focus this energy on

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trying to produce airplanes more efficiently, change
the way we produce them.”
Although the interest in lean can be traced back to
these production difficulties, it was a board awareness
of the needs of the business that allowed the company
to take the first tentative steps on the lean path. “It first
started at a corporate board level, there had to be
commitment to get it started, getting a lot of the senior
executives trained and Caroline Corvi, vice president
and general manager of our 737 line, was one of those
students who went back and learned and continues to
learn – she was in Japan this year,” Westby adds.
For the next three years Boeing sent over 1500
executives to Japan to study and then began contracting
with consultants – predominantly retired from Toyota –
who work with the company to this day. Their
involvement peaked at about 350 consulting weeks a
year, which has now fallen to about 100. “We now have
between 300 and 400 well trained kaizen people, and
many of these are dedicated full-time to carrying out
improvement work,” Herscher explains. “We also have
50 master black belts and 100 green belts.”
THE RENTON REVOLUTION
The initial focus for the lean activities was the Renton
facility on the production line of the venerable 737
programmes and latterly the new generation 737s.
“That was where we first introduced to the final
assembly areas this concept of what we call our nine-
step plan – from value stream aligning to visual
controls, point of use kitting and feeder lines,” Westby
explains. “Our plan at the time was to start at the door;
if you think of the value of the airplane, it is worth the
most when it’s at the door ready to leave. So we started
looking at our operations from the last six days of the
airplane, tried to figure out how we could balance the
line – how we could get more work performed, trying to
get this concept of treating an airplane like a race crew
IEE Manufacturing Engineer | August/September 2005
treats a racing car, so that the airplane is always
moving and we are always working on it.”
The operation went from two lines of airplanes in
slant positions to, for the very first time, turning them
nose to tail – a huge change for the factory. “We turned
the first airplane at the door and the rest were still
slanting,” Westby recalls. “We worked through the
nine-step plan, turned the second one, then the third
one, the fourth one so we were pulsing them nose to
tail and then finally we came up with a moving
concept, where we were moving them as we went
down the line.”
That transformation from slant to in-line was the
catalyst for numerous other changes in the way Boeing
assembled aircraft. “When you talk about point of use
kitting, the concept came to us that we needed to treat
the mechanics the same way that you treat a surgeon in
an operating room, he needs to have all the tools, all the
instructions, all the parts – everything he needs, we
need to bring to him.”
Previously the mechanic would arrive, collect his
daily works instruction before walking to the tool room
to get his tools, go to the store get his parts, go
somewhere else to get any hazardous materials and
sealants. “He would go and collect everything before he
ever got near the airplane,” Westby says. “We carried
out a lot of time studies to discover what the actual
touch time was for mechanics and found that 60% of
the time the mechanic wasn’t working on the airplane
building it, it was just sitting there, and the plane is
where all your money is.
“A lot of these changes were cultural in nature, so
we started to try and supply everything in station, not
before they needed them, not too late, but just at the
right time.
“We certainly saw some progress if you measure it
in terms of flow times, particularly on our 737
operations. We used to have 28 days flow for the final
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Lean manufacturing

assembly operation in about 1994; when we introduced

65 years at Renton
the 737 next generation we reduced it from 28 to 22 and
Located a few miles southeast of Seattle, the Renton manufacturing
today we are down to 11 or 12 days. I would say that all
facility once was a marsh through which the Cedar River flowed. In
of those things started to build a groundswell, just
1941, the US Government needed a location to build the XPPB-1
thinking about how that adds value to the bottom line
Sea Ranger, an experimental flying boat that would serve as a
of your inventory.”
bomber and patrol aeroplane. Under Boeing supervision, the Cedar
Despite the obvious successes there is still some way
River was diverted and construction began on a 95acre, 2.3 million
to go, particularly in the matter of vendors managing
square foot plant.
on-line stock, delivering parts just in time as decreed in
Military production carried Renton activities through the rest of
the Toyota Production System. The aim is that the first
the 1940s. In 1952, Boeing made a $16m gamble developing a
Boeing employee to touch any part would be the
prototype that would change commercial aviation history – the
mechanic fitting it to the aircraft.
Boeing 367-80, nicknamed the Dash 80. Two different production
aircraft were developed from the Dash 80; the military KC-135
ATTITUDE TO LEAN
Stratotanker and the world's first successful commercial jetliner –
As with all transformation, the Boeing enlightenment
the 707, which established Boeing as a leader in the aviation
has not been universally appreciated. “There were
industry and ushered in the new age of commercial jet
many, many sceptics and still probably are, and not
transportation.
just among the workforce,” Westby says. “I include
After 37 years of production, the last 707 rolled off the assembly line
people in management and the support organisations
in April 1991.
in that group, and working with this sentiment was
With the company's newfound success in commercial jet
one of the real values of having the consultants on
transports, Boeing continued new aeroplane development and during
board. They will tell you that one of their biggest jobs
the 1960s introduced two of the most popular jetliners in aviation
when they first came in here was not to consult, but to
history – the 727 and the 737, with the 757 added at Renton in 1982,
insult and they were very good at insulting us,
although by airline terms the programme was short-lived, Boeing
humiliating us and opening our eyes to a different way
ended production in 2004.
of seeing the world.
The final assembly building for the 737 and 757 originally was
“This had to start with management first, and I’ll be
intended for 747 production and later for the Boeing Supersonic
honest, I was one of the sceptics. When you get difficult
Transport. The Boeing 747 was ultimately built at a new site in
questions from the consultants like: ‘this job that takes
Everett, while SST never went into production. When completed,
10 days, why can’t you do it in two?’ Some of our first
the 737/757 final assembly building was the world's largest building
thoughts were ‘this is airplane manufacturing, we are
by volume – a record later surpassed by the final assembly building
not like cars’. But I have come to learn you can
for the Everett facility.
certainly apply those same techniques to this business
The ground floor of the final assembly building for the Boeing 737
and we have done.”
and 757 covers 760,000ft2 (70,600m2). Activities at other main
One of Westby’s early introductions to the
buildings at the Renton site include sub-assembly, wing-line
consultant’s methods was when he was working on
production and a paint hangar.
the post-production side of the 737 programme,
responsible for commissioning the aircraft.

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“One of the consultants spent a day out in the yard
going through the process day by day, shift by shift.
We showed them our overall flow rate that was at
18 days. We talked about this process as a factory
without a roof and he decided that we should achieve
it in nine days.
“It was a shock, but it caused us to start thinking
hard about the way we were doing things. At first there
is a lot of resistance, there is denial, there’s ‘just go
away’, but it causes you to start to think that there
must be something to this. You start to get more people
in and say ‘what would it take to reduce the flow rate?’
and people say ‘I think we can do this and this pretty
soon’, so then it is like ‘this is okay’, so that is the sort
of journey that we have been on in every aspect of this
business.”
Achieving buy-in from all stakeholders is something
that many lean implementations have struggled to
sustain, but a factor that is vital to its ultimate success.
“A lot of the change had to do with culture and I think
one way that you can get at that is to ask people, ‘do you
think that the way we do things today is the best that it
could be?’ and people generally answer ‘no, I think we
can do it better’. So now it’s about what are the tools
that we need? and how can we teach these tools? We
start with small things and achieve success – you get
fewer sceptics and more believers, and in the case of
the 737 that flips over and you get a lot more people
understanding the power of what teamwork and lean
can do for you and it changes. I think it’s small steps
and if you are in it you don’t even realise the change.
“Today we are doing a lot of lean things and there
are still sceptics but there are a whole lot fewer of
them because they have been able to witness the
IEE Manufacturing Engineer | August/September 2005
significant changes that we have made as we embark
on this journey.”
Although the consultants have underpinned the
entire process over the years, Boeing has lessened its
dependency on outside assistance. In the beginning
every improvement workshop that they held would
include a consultant, but today there are hundreds of
workshops that they run with their own people who
have learned and trained. “I think that people are
becoming more comfortable with the fact that the
way we do things today is not good enough and we
have to continually figure out how to improve, and
that they are getting more and more used to change –
certainly in some areas more than others,” Westby
says. “The further you come with change, the easier it
is to continue to change, and it has a momentum of
its own.”
The attitude of only working with those who want to
learn is as relevant with suppliers as it is with in-house
staff and management. The lean programme is not
contained within the four walls of the factory but
attempts to reach upstream to key suppliers. “We have
some suppliers that have implemented just-in-time
better than we have,” Westby explains. “But one of the
things that we learned in-house was don’t try and teach
people that don’t want to learn. So there are enough
suppliers interested that want to participate and help
and we can go make improvements with them. And the
ones that don’t want to learn will eventually have to
come along.”
One of the many tools that Boeing utilise in their
continuous improvement activities are what are
dubbed as ‘Moonshine Shops’ – innovation think tanks
that take employees off line to brainstorm production
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improvements, many of which are immediately
implemented on the line. “I think they encouraged that
little bit of counter culture,” Westby says. “A little bit of
culture that says ‘we don’t want to deal with the
bureaucracy, we just want to go and do something’. So
it has been a source for folks to understand how we are
making these changes without having to wait for
bureaucracy to do that for us.
“The good thing on the bureaucracy side is that it
has allowed us to take a look at those things and ask us
ourselves ‘why does it take us so long to go through
these process?’ It’s an opportunity to push it and an
opportunity for people that control this process to be
encouraged that there are ways of working around it
and they better get on board or they’re going to waste
more of their time.”
THE WAY FORWARD
With the competitive threat from Airbus likely to
intensify with the new Boeing 787 set against the huge
Airbus A380 and A350, Westby is aware that the
journey must continue, and persist with delivering
results. “We are in a very competitive business and
fundamentally we need to figure out ways to drive our
cost down for two key reasons,” Westby says. “One,
because the industry needs us to, the airline industry,
particularly in the United States is not in the most
healthy shape right now, so the more we can do to
reduce the price of our products, the easier they are
going to be able to afford them. When they make those
decisions, we are in competition with a viable
competitor who continues to look at opportunities to
reduce their cost, so we cannot stand still.
“We try to characterise this lean journey that we are
Lean manufacturing
‘‘ At first there is a lot of
resistance, there is denial,
there’s ‘just go away’
’’
on as a race that has no finishing line. You can’t stop,
when you move the bar and reach it you have to go on
and figure where to move the bar to next. There are
many areas where we can continue to find ways to
make improvements. We have learned from the Toyota
folk that they still look at takt time and as sure as they
are, they look to save seconds in their process. We are
still at places were we can save hours and days, so we
have a lot of opportunities in front of us, which is
exciting, it’s really fun to train different people and to
see them get enthused so that they can generate those
ideas and be bold and make changes out there.” 
737 facts and figures
• Airlines ordered 737 models of the Next-Generation 737 before the
first airplane was delivered on 17 December, 1997.
• Within five years of entering service, the worldwide fleet of Next-
Generation 737s surpassed 10 million flight hours, a feat equal to one
airplane flying more than 1141 years non-stop.
• Boeing made history when it delivered the 1500th Next-Generation
737 in six years, sooner than any other commercial airplane model.
The previous record holder was the family of Classic 737-300s, -400s
and -500s, which reached the milestone in 10 years.
• Overall, the entire 737 family is the best selling commercial jet in
history, winning orders for more than 5500 737s.
• On the average 1250 737s are in the air at all times; one takes off
every five seconds.
• The 737 fleet has carried more than 12 billion passengers.
• Since its commercial revenue service history began in 1968, the 737
fleet has flown more than 75 billion miles -- approximately 403 round
trips from the earth to the sun.
• Typically, about 50 gallons of paint are used to paint an average 737.
Once the paint is dry, it will weigh approximately 250 pounds per
airplane, depending on the paint scheme.
• There are approximately 36.6 miles of wire on the Next-Generation
737-600/-700/-800/-900 models, four miles less than the 737-300/-
400/-500 models.
• On average, there are approximately 367,000 parts on a Next-
Generation 737 airplane.
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