- based near the engineering teams; frequent collaborations
- unionized, highly skilled workforce
The people who took over Boeing and moved the HQ out of SEA intentionally picked SC to union-bust their own workforce.
MBAs just refuse to believe that workplace culture and experience matter — so they treat high skilled workers like dumb, replaceable cogs and then their companies fail a decade later when the senior/principal staff are incompetent or non-existent.
That same mentality is why their new planes have major issues:
They don’t have competent senior/principal engineers because they viewed mid-career engineers as “too expensive” — and so didn’t train any.
The WSJ article was maddening in failing to even mention that for the years when the 787 was assembled in both Washington and South Carolina (up until 2020?), the vast majority of quality issues were coming from South Carolina. So much so that some airlines stipulated they would only take Washington-assembled planes. Now that the 787 is only assembled in South Carolina (Boeing doubled-down on their strategy despite the well-known quality issues), no doubt the ongoing defects issue is as least partly related, and not merely "microscope" related.
I guess you have to read "moved the HQ out of SEA" (to Chicago) and "intentionally picked SC [for 787 final assembly] to union-bust their own workforce" separately, then it makes more sense...
Kansas is a right-to-work state and is where Boeing builds 737 fuselages, does passenger to cargo conversions, and does a hefty chunk of their work for the DoD on pre-merger products.
Boeing sold off the fuselage plant in 2005, closed up conversions, and moved the DOD work to San Antonio in 2014. There are a few small subsidiary companies there, but no mainline Boeing.
- older, more mature organization
- based near the engineering teams; frequent collaborations
- unionized, highly skilled workforce
The people who took over Boeing and moved the HQ out of SEA intentionally picked SC to union-bust their own workforce.
MBAs just refuse to believe that workplace culture and experience matter — so they treat high skilled workers like dumb, replaceable cogs and then their companies fail a decade later when the senior/principal staff are incompetent or non-existent.
That same mentality is why their new planes have major issues:
They don’t have competent senior/principal engineers because they viewed mid-career engineers as “too expensive” — and so didn’t train any.