Boeing delivers a 777 free of defects
United says it's a first;
renewed efforts cited
Wednesday, February 10, 1999
By BRUCE RAMSEY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
REPORTER
Last year it was the Dog of the
Dow, according to the upcoming
edition of Fortune magazine.
Investors were unhappy about the
performance of its stock.
Customers voiced displeasure with
manufacturing defects and delivery
holdups.
But last week, Boeing did
something one of its best
customers could not remember
ever happening before. On Feb. 3,
the company delivered a 777 to
United Airlines with no defects.
"It was a perfectly clean airplane,
with the ground checks and the
flight checks," said United's vice
president for engineering and
technical support, Lou Mancini.
No "squawks."
Mancini, who has been taking
delivery of Boeing airplanes for 14
years, said he could not remember
it happening before. And he would
know. He has an inspection team
at Boeing that goes over every
new plane before the airline
accepts it from the manufacturer.
"They're up there to make sure our
interests are protected," he said.
The team has found some
airplanes with so many problems
that they missed their delivery
dates by several days. Boeing
paid to fix the problems, but the
airline lost thousands of dollars in
potential revenues.
Other planes have met their
delivery dates, Mancini said, but
the team has always found
something that needed to be fixed
-- a black box, a light bulb, a part
misaligned -- something.
Until the 777 delivered a week ago
today.
Just four months ago, Boeing and
United made headlines when a
Boeing employee leaked an
internal memorandum about United
Airlines' complaints. A senior vice
president of the airline had told a
Boeing team that United would be
forced to use Airbus airplanes
unless Boeing focused more on
quality and service.
Other airlines reported finding
tools left inside wings and
stabilizers.
Boeing Chief Executive Officer Phil
Condit pledged to do better.
Deborah Limb, the company's
director of customer quality and
the author of the leaked
memorandum, said yesterday that
the no-squawks 777 is a sign that
Boeing's production system is
recovering from the shutdown of
late 1997.
"Most of our work is getting done
back in sequence," she said. "As
we do that, things get built in the
right locations." There is less
"traveled work," of crews having to
go out on the flight line and fix
things that should have been done
in the plant.
The company collects statistics on
traveled work and other production
measures, including a whole set of
monthly figures specific to United
Airlines. The figures are
confidential. But she said, "Over
the last 12 months, we've seen a
significant drop in traveled work on
all models."
Defects have been reduced by
about 10 percent in the past year,
she said. Defects also are
expected to decline on new
products, such as the 777 and the
Next Generation 737s, after the
first year of production.
Stockholders are still waiting for
the company's bottom line to
improve. Boeing's stock, a
component of the much-watched
Dow Jones Industrial Average, has
a long way to go to recovery. It
closed yesterday, down 7/8 at 35
1/2, still well below its 52-week
high of 56 1/4.
But as a customer, United's
Mancini is pleased that the
defect-free 777 doesn't appear to
be an oddity. Boeing's most recent
747 delivery to United also was
cleaner than usual, he said.
Is it a trend? "We don't know that
yet," he said, "but boy, it was a
great data point to have." |
