As Boeing Co. wages a battle with quality lapses in its 737 factory outside Seattle, there are signs of progress, like the silence that engulfs the factory complex at 10:30 a.m. every Wednesday.
The clattering of tools halts for an hour as mechanics stop building narrowbody jets lined up nose-to-tail and break into small work groups to talk through their on-the-job impediments and irritants. The discussions often center on persistent headaches, like a hole repeatedly drilled in the wrong location by a key supplier, Boeing employees said.
With the second anniversary approaching of the Alaska Air Group Inc. midair near-calamity that plunged Boeing into crisis, the planemaker is reinforcing the safety and quality plan it crafted last year with feedback from employees and regulators. The goal: to root out quality lapses, improve training and address a toxic top-down culture that discouraged front-line workers from flagging breakdowns and suggesting fixes.
“The thing we’re most focused on is this relentless war for quality, and this war against defects,” said Katie Ringgold, vice president and general manager of Boeing’s 737 program. “And that’s through our entire business, not just what happens within these walls.”
The early results are encouraging, executives said. So-called traveled work, the industry term for parts installed out of sequence, has declined 75% while the flow of planes through the factory improved by about 60% since April 2024.
Boeing has also seen a significant decline in lost tools by its mechanics — which can contribute to debris left inside finished planes — and defects in the jet frames arriving from Spirit AeroSystems Holdings Inc., the aerostructures supplier it’s acquiring. Boeing has stepped up its search for flaws within fuselages arriving by rail from Spirit’s Wichita, Kansas factory in the wake of the midair blowout. About a dozen inspectors comb the interior of the plane shells to quickly check hot spots, areas that are critical to the build process. The key is to capture problems early on.
An improperly installed tie-rod, for example, means that crews can’t hang overhead luggage bins late in the manufacturing process, said Jennifer Boland-Masterson, director of 737 manufacturing operations. Boeing shares its findings with Spirit during weekly calls as part of a feedback loop, aimed at getting to the root cause.
“You want to find that defect as close to the point in the manufacturing process as when it was created,” said Doug Ackerman, a Boeing vice president of quality.
The measures have helped Boeing as it approaches a post-crisis milestone, raising 737 output to 42 jets a month. The company is planning for a series of rate hikes, spaced about six months apart, that would eventually take output to a new record: assembling about 60 jets a month.
Getting there is going to be a long, difficult journey, particularly for a company trying to regain the trust of regulators and investors following years of turmoil. Boeing shares have plunged nearly 20% since late October, when it reported a $4.9 billion accounting charge because of certification delays for its 777X jetliner.
“They really do seem to be making good progress,” said Ron Epstein, an analyst with Bank of America. “They have lots of work to do, but they don’t claim otherwise.”
Boeing’s supply chain and much of the 737 plant is already working at the higher pace, which the Federal Aviation Administration approved in October. Ringgold expects to officially acknowledge that the factory’s three lines are building 42 jets every month before year-end.
But the true test of the quality and safety effort will come as Boeing pushes its cash cow jets like the 737 Max and 787 Dreamliner past pre-pandemic production peaks while eventually ramping up the 777X, its largest and newest current commercial model.
To speed up output of its narrowbody family, Boeing is preparing to stand up a fourth 737 production line in 2026 at its widebody factory in Everett to provide additional capacity. The line is ready, and the company has begun hiring mechanics to staff the new operation, Ringgold said.
The new assembly line will build all of the 737 Max family, except the smallest model. Contrary to reports, Boeing plans to build a variety of 737 models there, not just the Max 10, which is still being certified by the FAA, Ringgold said.
Steadily increasing production of the 737 is vital to returning Boeing to better financial health after six years of losses. But following a series of crises and damaging whistleblower revelations, the company is trying to avoid overly stressing its employees or suppliers.
Rooting out deep-seated cultural issues and rebuilding trust remains a work in process. “We’ve done work around culture, and it’s not perfect, and our work isn’t done,” Ringgold said. “And it will never be done.”
Employee involvement sessions used to be a staple of factory life back when the Renton plant was seen as a model of innovation. The meetings were revived last year at the request of long-time factory workers during quality stand-downs that the manufacturer held as it faced a fresh crisis.
More than 100,000 workers were asked to identify breakdowns and suggest improvements after last year’s near-catastrophe for Alaska triggered investigations of Boeing quality controls, brought a swarm of federal inspectors into the factory and contributed to a financial squeeze.
The earlier sessions, which fizzled out a decade ago, were held in conference rooms outside of regular shift hours.
Now, work stops at the factory for a second time at mid-afternoon so teams can have their say. So far, technicians have addressed more than 1,000 complaints and suggestions raised by employees via so-called kaizen cards, a nod to the Japanese concept of continuous improvement through tiny increments.
Shutting down the factory for the weekly meetings “is the best thing we ever did,” said Angi Lancaster, a senior manager for 737 manufacturing operations, “because it shows everybody that we are serious about improving our business.”