Abstract
Boeing 737 Max is one of the newest plane models produced by Boeing, that first took flight in 2016. Ever since, it had suffered 2 crashes, which resulted in the loss of 346 passengers and 2 crews. The company is blamed for these tragedies, as the root of all problems is seen in poor quality control, constrained time schedules, and poor pilot training, among other factors. Boeing is known for implementing Six Sigma, with over 360 personnel trained in its tenets, methods, and practices. The catastrophe could have been avoided, had Six Sigma remained prevalent during the engineering and production of the Boeing 737 Max.
Introduction
Boeing 737 Max is the fourth-generation narrow-body airplane produced by Boeing, as a reconfigured and updated design of the Boeing 737, featuring better engines, aerodynamic improvements, and modifications to the existing airplane (“About the Boeing,” n.d.). Despite the features mentioned by the company after its first deployment in 2016, the plane turned out to be a major fiasco for the company, proving to have major safety and quality issues, which caused numerous groundings along with 2 crashes that caused the deaths of 346 passengers and 2 crews in total (CNA, 2019). The blame was placed on insufficient testing, quality, and preparation of pilots. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the failures of Boeing through the prism of Six Sigma.
Summary of Both Crashes
The first crash happened on October 29, 2018, near Jakarta. An Indonesian flight owned by Lion Air crashed into the Java sea soon after leaving the airport. The crash that took the lives of 189 passengers and the crew was attributed to an erroneous angle-of-attack caused by the defective MCAS unit, which ordered an automatic nose-down trim, which the crew was not trained to deal with (CNA, 2019). The lack of appropriate training in flying Boeing 737 Max was also blamed on the company, which had declared, upon releasing the new machine, that pilots needed no additional training to fly it.
The second crash occurred on March 19, 2019, with an Ethiopian Airlines flight, which crashed under circumstances similar to tragedy in Jakarta, claiming the lives of 157 passengers and the crew (Gates, 2019). The perpetrators were declared to be similar ? the pilot was unable to turn off the MCAS unit and manually pull the plane out of the pivot, which resulted in a crash 6 minutes after leaving the airport in Nairobi. Although the company claims that the pilots have received proper training after the first incident, they deny any pilot responsible for the crash. MCAS remains the only potential candidate for causing the crash.
Lean Six Sigma and the Airline Industry
Lean Six Sigma is a continuous methodology for quality improvement, that is utilized throughout the airline industry by companies such as Boeing, Airbus, and numerous others. The primary objectives of the system are to reduce waste and improve the quality of the products, processes, and services by eliminating variance. It is a data-driven approach that analyzes the information about process performance, seeks to enhance value-adding activities while removing wasteful and pointless operations (Lee, 2018). As a result, the process is optimized and controlled at every stage, resulting in faster, less wasteful, and more efficient production.
Boeing is allegedly committed to following Lean Six Sigma procedures, as prior to the 737 Max fiasco, the company had a reputation for excellent quality, high safety standards, and high training standards for pilots allowed to operate their machines. The company’s reliability and quality assurance director boasted that the company employs over 300 Six Sigma green belts and 60 black belts in order to exclude any chances of defects that might lead to the loss of life or financial costs for Boeing’s clients (Lee, 2018).
Reasons for Boeing’s Failure Through the Prism of Six Sigma
Many observers note that the primary reason for the poor quality of the MCAS unit of the Boeing 737 Max model, as well as other constructional, operational, and training issues, lie in the effort to push the product quickly enough to provide it to potential customers as soon as they were ready to replace their old models with new ones. The main pitches that Boeing offered were the improved capacity, quality of engines, reduced fuel consumption, speed of production, and the lack of necessity to retrain personnel to use it. At the same time, it violated several aspects of safety and quality control, as outlined by the Lean Six Sigma paradigm, namely:
- Testing and quality control: Being pushed by the circumstances of the market and the promises made to shareholders and customers, Boeing neglected to properly test the systems in order to save time and keep production costs down (Ma, 2019);
- Pilot training: Six Sigma puts an emphasis on ensuring that employees and customers know how to properly utilize the plane in order to ensure the safety and security of its passengers (Gates, 2019). Boeing’s failure to inform and train the pilots in disabling MCAS in the case of an emergency caused the crashes of both planes.
- Downplaying of the plane’s features. Recent reports indicate that in order to pass FAA inspection, various systems were either left not mentioned or avoided (Ma, 2019).
- Poor resource allocation: Due to time constraints placed on the project, each part of it lacked either the appropriate time or human resources allocated to it. One of the important tenets of Six Sigma is to ensure that the processes receive exactly as much time and personnel as needed, no more and no less (Lee, 2018).
- Cost-driven corporate culture: As reported by Ma (2019), the product development and production stages were largely driven by cost-efficiency. Six Sigma achieves savings in money by implementing high-quality standards. Boeing did so by setting clear budget limits and forcing the engineers to adhere to them, often at the cost of quality.
As it is possible to see, all of these practices violate the tenets of Six Sigma in one way or another. Quality control was rejected in favor of speed and direct cost-saving practices that contradicted the basic premises of the practice.
Six Sigma: Costs of Poor Quality
The reasons why the high standards of practice promoted by Six Sigma are important in the airplane production industry lies in the incrementally high costs associated with poor quality. A poorly-made toaster may malfunction and cause a short circuit; a poor-quality car may cause the loss of one or several lives in a roadside accident. A systematic mistake in the construction of an airplane can kill hundreds of people, which is what happened in Nairobi and Jakarta. The identified costs of poor quality for Boeing are as follows:
- Value of human life. It would be unethical to measure this point in a monetary equivalent, as it takes precedence over any other costs. Any industry that deals with the safety and security of individuals on such a scale are expected to have the highest standards of quality.
- Costs of improving the performance of the flight control system. Since MCAS was to blame for nearly all groundings and crashes that have occurred with the Boeing 737 Max model, the company is forced to ground all planes, fix the issues of the MCAS unit, and run thorough tests in order to ensure its safety. The time and money expenditures associated with these post-factum procedures are significant.
- Defense and settlement of legal claims: As it stands, Boeing is engaged in numerous lawsuits from Leon Airlines, Ethiopian Airlines, the victims of the crashes, and other organizations that feel the company engaged in deceitful practices that caused the tragedies. Investigations into how the plane was certified are also underway.
- Losses of future orders: After the crashes, many airline companies that considered replacing or adding the new Boeing 737 Max planes to their fleets have reconsidered, which caused massive losses in potential orders.
- Long-term damage to the Boeing brand: It will take years for the accidents to be forgotten by the international community, which weakens the company brand name, improves the standing of its competitors, and results in long-term losses in contracts and money.
As it is possible to see, the potential costs for Boeing were significant, meaning that the decision to save money and time on the quality of software testing and development was extremely flawed. The costs of testing the software and issuing an appropriate upgrade are relatively small, compared to the existing and future losses of Boeing.
Conclusions
In airline industries, it is unacceptable to save money and time at the expense of quality. The case of Boeing 737 Max is a case study demonstrating the truthfulness of such conclusions. Had the company not step away from the tenets of Six Sigma already implemented in its production and operational processes for years, the company would have suffered minor losses in orders but produced a high-quality product that would have made Boeing proud. Instead, its brand name was ruined, the company faces numerous charges, and over 346 lives were lost ? the cost of poor quality.
References
About the Boeing 737 Max. (n.d.). Web.
CNA. (2019). Indonesian investigators determine 737 MAX design flaw, oversight lapses in Lion Air crash: Report. Web.
Gates, D. (2019). Flawed analysis, failed oversight: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system. Seattle Times. Web.
Johnston, P., & Harris, R. (2019). The Boeing 737 MAX saga: Lessons for software organizations. Software Quality Professional, 21(3), 4-12.
Lee, J. S. (2018). Analysis of international competitiveness in the aircraft industry. East Asian Journal of Business Economics, 6, 31-41.
Ma, A. (2019). A former Boeing 737 Max engineer said he was ‘incredibly pressurized’ to keep costs down and downplay new features to avoid FAA scrutiny. Business Insider. Web.