Boeing's new CEO is making slow changes on his first day on the job
Today is Kelly Ortberg's first day as Boeing (BA) CEO, and he's already getting compliments about his workplace.
Ortberg has decided to work at Boeing's Seattle office, where the company was based for 85 years before it moved its headquarters to Chicago in 2001.
The new CEO said in a memo to employees Thursday that he decided to work 2,300 miles away from the company's current headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, to help restore trust in the company's commercial airplane business.
"Given the complexity of what we do, I firmly believe we need to be closer to our manufacturing lines and development programs across the company," Ortberg said in the letter. "I plan to work in Seattle so that I can be closer to our commercial airplane programs," Ortberg said Thursday.
Ortberg said he will be at the Renton, Washington, plant where the company makes its troubled 737 Max airplanes.
Boeing critics say the move from its Puget Sound plant more than 20 years ago underscores the company's focus on financial results over manufacturing processes.
However, Boeing has been plagued by serious quality issues in recent years. That led to two deadly crashes and a spate of catastrophic incidents, including a door plug exploding from the fuselage on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max flight on Jan. 5.
Richard Abulafia, managing director of AeroDynamic Advisory and a longtime Boeing executive critic, applauded Ortberg’s choice of office location.
“It looks very promising,” he said. “It shows that he’s not afraid to go where the problems are and work hard to fix them.” Another advantage of his presence is that you get an accurate picture of the situation, rather than a filtered version of what people think you want to hear. He still seems like the opposite type of leader that caused Boeing’s problems.”
Boeing has previously insisted that moving its headquarters is in the company’s best interest, noting that Boeing makes products other than commercial airplanes, including defense and space businesses, and that executives responsible for commercial airplanes are often based in Seattle, even though its headquarters are located elsewhere.
The company said it had no comment on whether it was considering moving its entire headquarters back to Seattle with Ortberg.
Ortberg will be busy no matter where he is based. The company has been struggling for more than five years. Design flaws in the 737 Max, its best-selling airplane, led to multiple fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019, followed by a 20-month grounding of the plane, which has led to financial losses in recent years that have exceeded its $33 billion core operating loss in the most recent quarter.
In January, a door plug on an Alaska Airlines plane exploded as it approached 16,000 feet, tearing a large hole in the side of the plane and renewing interest in the plane’s manufacturing problems. The company has since agreed to plead guilty to deceiving the Federal Aviation Administration, a plea that will require the company to work under the supervision of a court-appointed investigator.
The company faces multiple federal investigations, including one brought by the National Transportation Safety Board, which recently wrapped up a two-day public hearing into the Alaska Air incident. Boeing executives acknowledged that the company still does not know why the plane’s door plug exploded, leaving Boeing’s Renton, Washington, plant short of four latches needed to hold the plug in place.
“We don’t know, and they don’t know either, and that’s the problem,” Federal Aviation Administration Chair Jennifer Homendy told reporters during the hearing.
Ortberg acknowledged in his letter that Boeing needs to do better.
“While we have a lot of work to do to restore trust, I am confident that working together will help us regain the industry leadership we expect,” he said.
https://github.com/mmihaltz/word2vec-GoogleNews-vectors/issues/14
https://github.com/cgapps/vendor_google/issues/37
https://github.com/elmoallistair/google-it-automation/issues/23
https://github.com/firmai/awesome-google-colab/issues/4
https://github.com/romainguy/google-io-2014/issues/12
https://github.com/JVictorDias/Dinossauro-Google/issues/14
https://pastelink.net/reh6t0jv
https://linksome.me/fredwazanu
https://open.firstory.me/user/clzllv3ia0baf01vo1hkd2nmh
https://wokwi.com/projects/405675972367904769
https://community.wongcw.com/blogs/810372/Boeing-s-new-CEO-is-making-slow-changes-on-his