DIE - Diversity, Inclusion, Equity
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Yesterday, the Washington Post ran a lamentable story about our distressed top airplane maker headlined, “Boeing’s manufacturing woes long preceded door-panel blowout.” The NTSB has issued its first report. Despite diligent efforts to obfuscate, the real problem got smuggled in there, like a treasure hidden under a matted raft of thin excuses knitted together with ropey explanations.
We can’t blame the Washington Post this time. The confusion was created by the FAA’s report, which laboriously listed its lengthy diagnosis of Boeing’s ‘woes’ without actually concluding anything useful. The FAA’s insights were often internally inconsistent. For instance, one highlighted problem was workers who won’t follow procedures. But then it identified an equally and opposite problem, management’s over-punishment of rule-breaking workers.
Well, which is it? Too much discipline or not enough? Maybe Boeing managers are using the wrong kind of discipline, but the FAA’s report never suggested that.
In sum, WaPo labeled the manufacturer’s myriad alleged mistakes as “systemic,” which was just a fancy dodge, claiming in other words there is no one single problem. But a theme emerged anyway, rising from the article like the goddess Venus rising from the foam, standing on a Boeing door-plug.
The theme was: Employees.
For whatever reason, the article (citing the NTSB report) focused on a standing 50-page manual for safely removing parts from airplanes. The manual is at least twenty years old, maybe older. I don’t know how many pages you think a manual for safely removing airplane parts should have, what with the pictures and diagrams and all.
I’m not bragging, but I’ve more or less successfully assembled a child’s tricycle using over fifty pages of instructions. Badly translated from Chinese. After midnight on Christmas Eve. After a certain amount of cheer. I’m not saying it was easy, or quick, but I did it. And I’m only a lawyer, not a tricycle mechanic.
But, according to WaPo, the current generation of Boeing workers finds the 50-page disassembly manual to be too long and confusing.
So what do you expect? The workers just ignore the long, confusing, and unstreamlined manual:
That second sentence about training was meant to lessen the sting, but actually made it worse. The not-reading problem is now in its second generation, with older employees training new workers in the wrong procedures. Which also proved that new Boeing workers aren’t required to read the instructions.
They’re waiting for someone else to explain it to them.
Maybe I’m being too critical. After all, it’s fifty pages. Apparently reading fifty pages is a lot to ask of an aircraft engineer, these days, especially when there are so many 15-second TikTok clips to watch.
Undaunted, WaPo again tried to soften the blow. It reported that even Boeing’s senior vice president Elizabeth Lund, who testified at the NTSB hearing, complained about the 50-page procedure manual, saying she had to go into a “quiet room and read it to myself several times.”
Had she not read it before? Oh well. This is where we are now, folks. Reading a key procedure manual on safely removing airplane parts takes concentration, if you can believe that, which is just too hard.
I bet Boeing’s current crop of employees would prefer to get re-assigned to the “cage” (a punishment mentioned in the article) rather than read this stupid manual.
Here’s a radical idea: How about give them a test on the procedure manual? A test that employees must pass, before working on the disassembly line? Is that really so hard? For airplane mechanics?
WaPo’s article never mooted that simple idea, merely waving off the written instructions as “burdensome.” The FAA reported Boeing employees mean well, but they just lack the ability to understand the instructions. Read between the lines:
The article didn’t admit that pandemic mandates led to critical worker shortages, but I think it’s fair to infer that. Regardless of the cause, Boeing —now well into its D.E.I. ‘transformation’— has hired lots of new workers over the last few years. And Boeing, for some reason, hired inexperienced workers who are likely to struggle with a technical, 50-page instruction manual:
Why would Boeing be searching for workers outside of candidates with previous aviation experience? The article didn’t say, but I bet it has something to do with a three-letter acronym.
Boeing isn’t stupid. Boeing knows. Older, experienced workers have been complaining about the new generation of unskilled, non-aviation employees:
But it’s the manual’s fault. Too long. Too complicated. Too burdensome. Too technical.
Some folks think Boeing is being sabotaged, under controlled demolition, slowly prepared for replacement by Chinese competitors. If so, Boeing is helping them. To get your aircraft company out of a hole, stop digging.
Oh well. The good thing is the newest generation of illiterate Boeing employees is the most diverse group in history. So.
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