Executives at Boeing decided their products weren't flying the way they'd like. While the sky-worthiness of their jets was never in question, the 737s, 747s and 777s weren't moving through two Washington State production facilities quickly enough for them to get airborne in a timely manner. To tackle that, Boeing turned to Toyota's lean production model, and then a partnership formed between the University of Kentucky and Toyota Motor Manufacturing of Kentucky's Georgetown plant to take the fat out of their manufacturing process.
Since 2000, Boeing has been working with Toyota and UK to streamline their production of jetliners. But the process is more than an overnight one, as Boeing officials have to translate a model that sees one car every 55 seconds come off the line in Georgetown to an average of 30 planes a month in Boeing's Renton, Wash., 737 facility.
"At Boeing, we have many experienced people in an old production system... And so we're trying to make changes to this new production system," said Sandra Postel, vice president of Boeing Production Systems Strategy and vice president and general manager of Propulsion Systems, who led a team of five 737 engineers to Central Kentucky in June to meet with Toyota and UK officials to learn more about lean manufacturing. "It's really a different culture. It is about employee involvement, it's about managers teaching rather than controlling,Ö and it is about creating data that the employees can see so that they can make improvements with the business."
Richard Alloo, a Toyota employee working full time with UK to teach lean manufacturing to the next generation of engineers, told the Boeing group one of the biggest hurdles to overcome is changing the mindset of management.
"The leadership of the organization has to understand that this is a process; it is not a quick fix. It is something that is going to take a concerted effort in terms of changing behaviors, changing culture, within the organization and applying the appropriate tools regardless of what products you are producing," Alloo said.
Toyota has been successful over the past 60 years, according to Alloo, because management has put the trust in team members to discover and solve problems on their own without waiting for management to find and fix the problem.
Alloo presented to the group of engineers, including Postel and UK President Lee Todd, Jr., who has practiced the Toyota method in his own businesses, which included a relationship with Boeing.
"The best thing a manufacturing employee can do if they see something going wrong is to stop manufacturing, and... have the ability to stop the line out there and say, 'Whoops, this is different.'" Then, Todd - who once manufactured tubes used in Boeing flight simulators - suggested giving employees the chance to ask what the company has done differently since yesterday, to be able to look at what has changed and isolate those areas to find the problem.
In order to allow Boeing and others to learn more and better implement lean manufacturing, Boeing presented UK a check for $200,000 to produce a book on the process.
"President Cho of Toyota really wants us to write a book on why does this thing work," Todd said. "It is not a whole bunch of papers and procedures as much as it is a philosophy that they have. Ö How do you keep that same type of manufacturing philosophy that you had in Japan, and how does it translate to America? How does it translate to Vietnam? How does it translate around the world when people have different backgrounds? Standardization is a big issue for them."
It is the same for Boeing.
"In our production system, we'd rather have 30,000 pairs of eyes looking at our processes and working on stabilizing and improving our process than 100 managers," Boeing's Postel said. "It is a very powerful concept. That being said, then, if you're going to engage 30,000 sets of eyes and hands in the production system, then you really have to know how to make that transition with the management and with the employees as far as the culture and the mindset that they need to have in order to be successful. We're trying to change people, rather than bring in new people and establish that.
"The inspectors used to sit up in their offices and then come down to the floor when the job was done, and never talk to the mechanic, and just inspect it and put a tag on it or not. The corporate culture that changes (means that) now the inspectors have to be down on the floor working with the mechanics in a collaborative environment," she said.
When the process began, the Renton facility would have 29 of the 737s on the floor in various stages of completion at a time; now with processes streamlined, there are only 11 in production at once.
Postel compared the process to a surgical procedure, where doctors are prepared with all their instruments at arm's reach. "That's what we want our mechanics to do, because they are adding value to the product, and we want them doing it right and we want to make sure they have everything they need.
"We've gone to a single moving line, and even though it goes one inch per half-hour, it's a moving line and it is the same concept as Toyota. We (put everything that is needed in kits.) We make it very visible. We deliver things right to the side, and before we had mechanics running all over the factory getting parts," Postel said.
To make the trip to Kentucky, the group of five engineers had to win a contest that encouraged creativity and innovation, said Eugene Burton-Breazeal, a 737 electrical design engineer.
"In our atmosphere with engineering, it's very logic driven, and to step away from that, you can come up with much better ideas," Burton-Breazeal said. "If you're forced to go beyond your comfort zone of saying 'I need to get from point A to point B' and you have to find seven different ways to get there, you start getting really creative on the sixth and seventh way."
Part of the creativity has already led to savings for Boeing, according to Postel. The 737 costs between $35 million and $70 million each. "Instead of having 29 of those in inventory, we now have 11, so that's big money. We think lean is great for that." While Boeing is still incorporating the Toyota model on the 737 line in Renton, the company is also trying to incorporate it on production of the 747 and 777 in a much larger facility in Everett, Wash.