John Oliver absolutely roasted Boeing, in this week's main story: (Link won't be available until tomorrow).
And Oliver didn't even spit in the direction of the wall-to-wall screwball comedy of fail from the BDS side of things. They've not been having a great time, and to this day the discipline of performing on fixed-price contracts seems to elude them.
Phantom Works and BGS legit have the best claim to success, but BPW is, well, tiny - they do black research stuff. And BGS . . BGS is an enigma. One big financial success of that org is def due to how Boeing's structured internally. Howayyyyyyver . . there is a reasonably-high-probability BGS cycles refurb parts as new on the regular[1]. Also supplies the greater Boeing org with an excellent stage venue for Depreciation, the Amazing Accounting Dog. Amusing cash tricks had gotten them a loooooong way in the ZIRP era . . but those days are quite gone.
[1] Something Boeing gets fined for ever other year, and not just inside BGS, either.
> McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing with Boeing's money, which is a great trick if you can pull it off.
What I find most sad about what Boeing has become is that it was so predictable. I worked as an outside contractor at various Boeing locations in Washington and Oregon installing, maintaining, and training on the operation of CNC milling machines in the mid '90s and early 2000s. I was there before and and in the early days of the merger with McDonnell Douglas. In those days the pervasive sentiment among the machinists, engineers, and managers, many of whom had spent two and three decades working for the company was that the merger was going to get people killed. Sadly, those predictions came true even if it took longer than some may have expected.
[0] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/646497/flying-blind...
The Boeing of old has been long gone since you were last there. It’s all run by MBAs now whose sole purpose is to minimize how much engineering can be done by the company.
Expect more deaths in the future. They seem very content continuing to solve systemic engineering problems with only business strategy.
This is just another repeat of the 787 outsourcing disaster which also ended with Boeing buying a bunch of their suppliers and bringing other work back in-house.
Just more financial shell games to screw labor.
I don't know about you but I'd prefer everyone building my airplane be highly paid with a management chain of former engineers. Not the cheapest labor a subcontractor can find managed by bean-counting accountants.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-dJMqpGvjM
(don't know if its blocked in the US)