Welcome to this end-of-year issue of Challenge magazine, a publication of Boeing Technology designed specifically for our engineering and technical work force.

It has been another interesting year of challenges—some faced and resolved, others still being worked on, and new ones being defined for 2006 and beyond.

Some of these new challenges are being defined by our new Chairman, President and CEO Jim McNerney, who is committed to continuously improving Boeing's growth and productivity. Key to our success in these areas is a culture that is collaborative and cooperative in leveraging our resources across the enterprise to drive business performance, satisfy our customers and behave ethically.

In this issue of Challenge, you will find stories that show how our work force is already headed in this direction—working together to support growth, reduce cost and improve our competitive position. You will see this, for instance, in our story about how establishing common processes and systems is helping our engineers work more efficiently and effectively together across the enterprise on key programs like the 787 and P-8A Multi-mission Maritime Aircraft.

We also have stories about how engineers have been working together across the enterprise to transfer some of Boeing's best technologies to other business units to help them operate more efficiently and effectively, including at our vertical/short-takeoff wind tunnel in Philadelphia, and how we are working together with our industry and customer partners to advance the state of the art in airplane noise reduction.

In addition to these projects, we highlight some exciting projects in Space and Intelligence Systems and some interesting robotics initiatives in Phantom Works. We also spotlight the employees who have received internal and external recognition for their accomplishments in 2005, and introduce you to some other technical employees whose skill, dedication and enthusiasm for their jobs are helping Boeing continue to do amazing things for the world.

We hope you enjoy these stories and learn something from them. We also hope you will continue to provide us with feedback and suggestions for future issues. Meanwhile, keep up the great work.

—Jim Jamieson
Boeing Senior Vice President
Chief Technology Officer