In addition to the tangible changes, Boeing personnel were asked to go through some mindset modifications. The "I can do it alone" was changed to "We can do it together". Getting people who were used to sitting down and solving problems alone to work in teams was a major obstacle, and Boeing spent a considerable amount of time trying to understand how good teams work. Boeing personnel initially resisted the idea of having customer personnel on the teams fearing that they would compromise the design process. Boeing has always been a conservative company which highly valued its privacy, and to change this decades old philosophy to one of idea sharing with suppliers and customers was not a simple task. Eventually, and with much prodding from upper management, most people realized the benefits of having everyone involved from the start.
On average, Boeing designs and builds a completely new airplane every 12 years. This long time between new aircraft puts additional pressures on designers, who are constantly creating new systems, to get their new designs into the current version. As Phil Condit point out, "everyone wants their new ideas in the new plane". At some point, however, new and improved has to take a back seat to freezing the design and building the airplane.
Boeing has always prided itself on building technologically advanced aircraft with minimal emphasis on cost with the philosophy that building a better plane is more compelling than building a cheaper plane. With the airlines new emphasis on cost, the designers have to continually evaluate their designs in terms of value. As Ron Woodard correctly points out: "The guy in row 15 won’t pay 55 cents for something in the cockpit if it won’t get him there faster."
Originally developed by Shadd Shokralla
