A630.1.4.RB - Board of Directors_RutbellGreg

I worked for McDonnell Douglas in Long Beach, California from 1987 to 2001. Unfortunately, McDonnell Douglas was behind trailing Boeing as far as sales and airplane product base but more importantly lacking a vision and strategy for the commercial global market. In addition, global competition including the rise of European Airbus which is an aerospace cartel consortium of England, France, Germany and Spain added more fuel to the fire. In addition to this, launching a new airplane product could cost billions of dollars with huge risks. Large amounts of capital and investments are required in: land, equipment, tooling, machinery, computers, software, manpower, research, development, materials, processes and methods. Management and business tools and processes must be in place too. Leadership understood that a transformational change was needed in the way we designed and built airplanes but what could it be? A strategic and visionary executive decision was made by leadership in the mid 1990's to develop and implement a new strategy known as "Japan Visits" to benchmark the automotive world leader Toyota including "The Toyota Production System" of people, process, philosophy and problem-solving also called the 4P's. This is known as lean manufacturing which is the elimination of waste and the effective utilization of resources. A plan was put together over a one year time frame schedule to send teams of six or so senior managers and directors for one week benchmark visits to Japan to benchmark Toyota and several other companies. In addition, there would be several trainers, facilitators and project leaders who were included in the visits. A lean manufacturing implementation plan and schedule was put together for Long Beach including: training, projects etc. What was my part in all this transformational, strategic and visionary change? I was one of the project leaders responsible for the MD-11 Program in Final Assembly. The MD-11 is a "stretched" follow-on version of the DC-10 jumbo trijet available in passenger and freighter. Final Assembly included joining the barrel sections, tail. wings, interiors, engines and function tests. There were about 500 employees (managers, mechanics and support) in Final Assembly. The two main parts of the plan included training and improvement projects with a focus on process and cost reduction. All employees were trained in lean manufacturing and then each of the teams identified team leaders and focals for their improvement projects which included workshops for several days and outbriefs to leadership. Training included text, lecture, videos and guest speakers from Japan. Outbriefs included improvement proposals, tasks, schedule and action items. Many employees were excited about the new process but there naysayers and doubters too including hearing phrases "we have always done it this way", "this is stupid and dumb", "who dreamed up this idea" etc. How did I work with this? I had to be patient, listen to them and ask for their ideas, feedback and help. In addition, showing them videos of how it works makes a huge difference to as seeing is believing and a picture is worth a thousand words. Once people see their ideas implemented and in action their approach and attitude change too. Unfortunately, this was too little and late as McDonnell Douglas could not survive the competitive pressures from Boeing and Airbus, lacking leadership and vision and poor union labor relations. Boeing purchased McDonnell Douglas in 1997 and shut down the commercial operations in Long Beach leaving only the military side in St Louis and Southern California. As far as my learning and experience from this, I have been very fortunate and able to apply build on this as a foundation during my aerospace career. References A Tale of Power and Vision (2007). [On-Line] Available https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZVIWZGheXY