Leaders of 4 growth, productivity initiatives tell where their teams' efforts are heading

The leaders of the four Boeing growth and productivity initiatives recently spoke at an Integrated Defense Systems leadership meeting about where their efforts are heading and how employees can provide support. Here's an edited version of their remarks.

Lean+: supporting the businesses 

Bill Schnettgoecke
Lean+

I get a lot of questions about what Lean+ is. Lean+ is about productivity, efficiency and execution. It's about using the powerful Lean tools and resources we have across Boeing and taking their utilization to the next level. It's about migrating our techniques to our suppliers and customers. It's about expanding Lean deeper into our office areas and back shops. But even more, Lean+ is about culture change. I'd call it a cultural evolution. When each of us realizes that we are the producers of a product or a service, we can then focus on the systematic, relentless elimination of waste in the processes we use. These are familiar concepts; Lean + is about the expansion of those concepts and about doing it with more velocity. (more)

Opportunity to excel

Rick Gross
Internal Services Productivity

There is a significant opportunity at Boeing to increase Support Service productivity. The Internal Services Productivity team is taking a structured approach to evaluating our cost structure, benchmarking it and identifying actions that will make a significant improvement in our support. (more)

Shaping supply chain for performance

Norma Clayton
Global Sourcing

The purpose of the Global Sourcing initiative extends well beyond reducing cost today. It creates the impetus for culture change and establishing expectations for year-over-year productivity gains. Each of our suppliers needs to be viewed as an enabler helping us grow our business. (more)

Improving development program performance

Nan Bouchard
Development Process Excellence

There are three primary focus areas within the Development Process Excellence initiative. An Enterprise Technology Team is looking at how we can maximize the leverage of our R&D investments. Our Product Development and Large-Scale Integration Team is examining ways to improve the effectiveness and productivity of our development programs. And a Lab and Test Asset Team is working to optimize the efficiency and performance of our enterprise lab services. (more)