It's frequently framed as an issue with Boing now having an accounting-driven culture instead of an engineering-driven culture. In that framing a CEO with engineering background is a logical choice to effect that culture change.

It was arguably under Muilenberg, an engineer, that many of the current issues with Boeing's culture were either created or allowed to flourish. I think it is "frequently framed" as an engineers-vs-accountants thing by engineers or others who like to think that STEM people can do no wrong.

I am an engineee of sorts, and have zero illusions about the shit engineers can cause, and do.

I think the real problem here is over-reliance on cost-savings as a single dimension of quality.

Cost savings and quality live on different scales so.

If a customer wants to buy thousands of a widget at $1500 and you usually sell them at $2000 a widget but you can move the slider on maintainability or make an agreement that the customer accepts some reduced quality -- if that's something the two businesses can agree on and it's not a negligent change to make then it's probably worth prioritizing that. I think we might agree on that.

Trying to figure out what to do in any given business situation is usually challenging because the devil is in the details. It happens that in this particular case, Boeing should be checking that their supplier installs bolts and drills holes correctly because their supplier has screwed it up so many times. But in a lot of industries, cheaping out on materials is a reasonable thing to do if your customers agree it's a reasonable thing to do and it's not going to kill anyone.

Exactly. If ordered to do so, a good engineer will be better at cutting costs to the bone than the greatest MBA.

It sounds like Boeing has mastered the art of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muntzing ... at 30,000 feet.

Not even accounting driven. It's MBA driven.

Accounts ask how much things cost and go from there. MBA's figure out how much things need to cost to make their spreadsheet work and tell you that's what you get.

Which is what happened at Boeing. They told the engineers they were going to develop the 787 for half the cost of previous models (we are very very smart). And it took twice as long and cost twice as much. Given that they couldn't afford a clean slate redesign of the 737 even if they wanted to. The result is the 737 Max which will cost them more than a clean redesign would have.

The point of the 737max was that it was a brownfield design which wouldn't require recertification by airlines of all the pilots who are certified for 737min planes.

A 7B7 greenfield narrow body plane would probably have been faster to design and a better plane in lots of "don't lie to the pilot and fly into the ground when a sensor is busted" ways, but would have required all airlines to re-certify their pilots, which is both expensive and would have caused the airlines to consider airbus and boeing on the merits...

The MAX cost the airlines more than recertification would have.

So the MBA's cost the stockholders money there too.

yeah, I'm an accountant (not an MBA) and we get a bad rap for this

corp accountants don't care about cutting costs, we just care about making sure things are presented/tracked in accordance with gaap

we may help identify/track costs but we aren't usually tasked with cutting costs

Exactly - management culture and engineering culture are opposite ends of a spectrum.

Being an engineer does not make someone a good person, though. Engineers are perfectly able to cut corners. Putting an engineer in the CEO seat won’t solve anything if there is no culture of responsibility. The problems continued under Dennis Muilenburg, which AFAICT has 2 degrees in engineering and none in business management.

I’d actually say it’s the safety culture that’s missing. Go have a phone call with someone at Shell and they’ll ask you if you’re in a safe place to have a call and if you know where the emergency exits are before starting the call. And the safety culture comes from the top regardless of if you’re an engineer or lawyer, or finance exec.

Sounds great! I introduced bike helmets for my team members to wear at office for additional safety and everybody’s loving it!

> Exactly - management culture and engineering culture are opposite ends of a spectrum.

And that’s the crux of the problem. They actually need one another but the egos on both sides refuse to acknowledge that.