Is Boeing adding the right type of overseers

 Another retired armed forces top brass have been added to Boeing mgmt. This time a retired admiral.

Yes I’m sure his nuclear bacground have made him very pedantic but do Boeing really need nuclear pedantry for its civilian airdraft production. Sounds expensive, not very productive and not something that would have a lasting effect. And not is there any actual nuclear apect to their civilian aircraft production program either.

Another thing is that to reach the grade of admiral he has had to always toe the “company” line. That is not something you as a user of its products want in Boeings executive suite at this point in time. You would want somebody to shake things up a bit. Somebody with some diverging opinions and not just another yes man.

Sounds like a press release friendly apointee thought out by finance people and lawyers and not what a engineering based top management would have been looking for.

What Boeing need is somebody with a multilevel experience. and not only vertically but also horisontaly. Somebody that that won’t be afrade of doing surprise inspections at its facilities to see for himself that procedures are being followed. That the specified type of material is being used always. And also whether theese procedures are the correct and most up to date ones with todays knowledge. Sample how to bend a split pin. Somebody that would even question aeronautical engineers weether their best practices are best also when seen by other hats like from the standpoint of a ships engineer, automotive engineer, machinery engineer, construction engineer, multi industry mechanic and so one.

Whether particular aeronautical engineering definitions are properly trained into the lets face it more mechanics and factory workers than specialist engineers that actually asembles these plane are also something that hould be looked at. And a production lot with a certain amount of turnover in addition. Do everybody know the difference between a bolt, set screw, grub screw and threaded stub for example. (Still no picture in the free available of the bolt actually to be used for securing the door plug. Only in its mounted position) And what could be the physical consequenses if you replaced the one with the other. If production companies is to be lead entirely by finance people even they could have advantage of a short training course on this and some other engineering aspects.

The problem with most productive and developing areas today is also that the people working in them, and then particularly the engineers, have become very specialised and at the same time very closed to ideas from other specialitees than the one they themselves ara a part of. And nobody with the ability to insight ever have the total oversight of all aspects. Often founded on paranoid security concerns. That was not howe the world operated only 30 years ago.