5 ms·

Why is the South Carolina factory worse than Washington?

by winslow 4y ago

dylan604 4y ago
As soon as you figure that out, I'm sure Boeing would love to know as well
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  They do know: - 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.
  - kasey_junk 4y ago
    Nit: The HQ was moved to Chicago, manufacturing was moved to SC.
    - rob74 4y ago
      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...
  - wahern 4y ago
    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.
  - coredog64 4y ago
    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.
    - buildsjets 4y ago
      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.
- tzayk 4y ago
  Unless the answer is not politically expedient!
nickff 4y ago
The trope is that the South Carolina facility is largely un-unionized (because it's in a freedom-to-work state), which has caused poor quality. I have not seen any clear evidence of this, as all Boeing facilities seem to have QC issues. On a related note, I'm not sure how Boeing's QC compares to Airbus, though both seem to have similar aircraft availability rates, which would indicate similar levels of QC.
- masklinn 4y ago
  > The trope is that the South Carolina facility is largely un-unionized (because it's in a freedom-to-work state) FWIW "right to work" is the normal terminology.
  - justinjlynn 4y ago
    "Freedom to work" and "Right to work" are both Orwellian euphemistic terms, to be honest. Realistically, it's best described as "mutual right to terminate employment without cause" or just "right to terminate".
    - nickff 4y ago
      They're euphemisms, but I am not sure they're Orwellian. How would you say they're Orwellian? It's better to just allow people to name their own movement, otherwise, you end up endlessly fighting about names (i.e. are people 'pro-life' or 'anti-choice' and 'pro-murder'/'anti-life' and 'pro-choice').
      - masklinn 4y ago
        > They're euphemisms, but I am not sure they're Orwellian. How would you say they're Orwellian? Right to work laws do not in any way provide a right to work.
        djbebs 4y ago
        They do though
posguy 4y ago
South Carolina planes were getting flown to Washington before delivery to customers when I had a friend still working there. He was finding metal shavings in the fuselage of the plane, along with tools, nicked wires and such. None of this should have made it out of the factory floor. Every crew that works on a plane has to certify (literally sign off a form) that when they worked on the plane they left it in good shape (no obvious defects, like metal shavings, tools left inside, etc). If the next shift comes in and finds dangerous debris or damage the prior crew should have noted, then the prior crew is required by the FAA to have a formal report written against them, as they have created a dangerous plane. Management has applied heavy pressure to my friend repeatedly to not report these incidents, despite his legal obligation. Ultimately, he took a $25k hit paying back the Boeing relocation package and left after 10 months to work on repairing trains (which has been a significant improvement).
- phkahler 4y ago
  >> Management has applied heavy pressure to my friend repeatedly to not report these incidents, despite his legal obligation. Yeah, the idea is to have management put pressure on the people who left stuff in bad shape. Shooting the messenger isn't the right answer.
  - posguy 4y ago
    Shooting the messenger seems to be Boeing tradition of the last decade. When I was a kid, half the parents I knew worked at Boeing and were proud of the quality engineering or manufacturing they did, but over the past two decades Boeing has had this crew retire and has worked to shift to a blame the messenger culture.
    - FabHK 4y ago
      There's this documentary on Netflix that also notes the cultural shift, and largely blames it on the 1997 acquisition of McDonnell-Douglas, and the subsequent shift, roughly speaking, from an engineering-dominated culture to an MBA-dominated culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downfall:_The_Case_Against_Boeing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downfall:_The_Case_Against_Boe...
michaelmrose 4y ago
- dang 4y ago
  Regional putdowns and flamewar will get you banned here, so please don't post like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: we've unfortunately had to ask you many times for many years to stop breaking the HN guidelines. Would you please fix this? I don't want to ban you. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29687637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29687637 (Dec 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29629314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29629314 (Dec 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28859501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28859501 (Oct 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28238567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28238567 (Aug 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27430570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27430570 (June 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20380355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20380355 (July 2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20288841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20288841 (June 2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18233836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18233836 (Oct 2018) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11536933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11536933 (April 2016)
  - michaelmrose 4y ago
    Ok

Why is the South Carolina factory worse than Washington?

dylan604 4y ago

As soon as you figure that out, I'm sure Boeing would love to know as well

zmgsabst 4y ago
They do know: - 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.
- kasey_junk 4y ago
  Nit: The HQ was moved to Chicago, manufacturing was moved to SC.
  - rob74 4y ago
    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...
- wahern 4y ago
  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.
- coredog64 4y ago
  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.
  - buildsjets 4y ago
    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.
tzayk 4y ago
Unless the answer is not politically expedient!

nickff 4y ago

The trope is that the South Carolina facility is largely un-unionized (because it's in a freedom-to-work state), which has caused poor quality. I have not seen any clear evidence of this, as all Boeing facilities seem to have QC issues. On a related note, I'm not sure how Boeing's QC compares to Airbus, though both seem to have similar aircraft availability rates, which would indicate similar levels of QC.

masklinn 4y ago
> The trope is that the South Carolina facility is largely un-unionized (because it's in a freedom-to-work state) FWIW "right to work" is the normal terminology.
- justinjlynn 4y ago
  "Freedom to work" and "Right to work" are both Orwellian euphemistic terms, to be honest. Realistically, it's best described as "mutual right to terminate employment without cause" or just "right to terminate".
  - nickff 4y ago
    They're euphemisms, but I am not sure they're Orwellian. How would you say they're Orwellian? It's better to just allow people to name their own movement, otherwise, you end up endlessly fighting about names (i.e. are people 'pro-life' or 'anti-choice' and 'pro-murder'/'anti-life' and 'pro-choice').
    - masklinn 4y ago
      > They're euphemisms, but I am not sure they're Orwellian. How would you say they're Orwellian? Right to work laws do not in any way provide a right to work.
      - djbebs 4y ago
        They do though

posguy 4y ago

South Carolina planes were getting flown to Washington before delivery to customers when I had a friend still working there. He was finding metal shavings in the fuselage of the plane, along with tools, nicked wires and such. None of this should have made it out of the factory floor. Every crew that works on a plane has to certify (literally sign off a form) that when they worked on the plane they left it in good shape (no obvious defects, like metal shavings, tools left inside, etc). If the next shift comes in and finds dangerous debris or damage the prior crew should have noted, then the prior crew is required by the FAA to have a formal report written against them, as they have created a dangerous plane. Management has applied heavy pressure to my friend repeatedly to not report these incidents, despite his legal obligation. Ultimately, he took a $25k hit paying back the Boeing relocation package and left after 10 months to work on repairing trains (which has been a significant improvement).

phkahler 4y ago
>> Management has applied heavy pressure to my friend repeatedly to not report these incidents, despite his legal obligation. Yeah, the idea is to have management put pressure on the people who left stuff in bad shape. Shooting the messenger isn't the right answer.
- posguy 4y ago
  Shooting the messenger seems to be Boeing tradition of the last decade. When I was a kid, half the parents I knew worked at Boeing and were proud of the quality engineering or manufacturing they did, but over the past two decades Boeing has had this crew retire and has worked to shift to a blame the messenger culture.
  - FabHK 4y ago
    There's this documentary on Netflix that also notes the cultural shift, and largely blames it on the 1997 acquisition of McDonnell-Douglas, and the subsequent shift, roughly speaking, from an engineering-dominated culture to an MBA-dominated culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downfall:_The_Case_Against_Boeing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downfall:_The_Case_Against_Boe...

michaelmrose 4y ago

dang 4y ago
Regional putdowns and flamewar will get you banned here, so please don't post like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: we've unfortunately had to ask you many times for many years to stop breaking the HN guidelines. Would you please fix this? I don't want to ban you. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29687637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29687637 (Dec 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29629314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29629314 (Dec 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28859501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28859501 (Oct 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28238567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28238567 (Aug 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27430570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27430570 (June 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20380355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20380355 (July 2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20288841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20288841 (June 2019) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18233836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18233836 (Oct 2018) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11536933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11536933 (April 2016)
- michaelmrose 4y ago
  Ok