THE BOEING COMPANY

The Boeing Company-Literature Review

The Boeing Company-Literature Review

Introduction

Boeing is the leading aerospace company and the largest commercial jetliner manufacturer in the world, with annual revenue for 2009 of $63.8 billion. In addition to airplane manufacturing, Boeing also designs and manufactures military aircraft, defense systems, missiles, and satellites, and has a contract with NASA to operate the International Space Station.

Because of the fierce rivalry with Airbus, another large aircraft company, it is necessary for Boeing to be efficient and innovative in order to stay ahead of the competition. In 2001, Airbus surpassed Boeing as the world's largest manufacturer of commercial aircraft, but had since stumbled. Airbus was two years behind schedule in developing their next plane, a 787 competitor, and was forced to cut 10,000 jobs. A quick and efficient development process for their new 787 Dreamliner afforded Boeing a valuable opportunity to regain its position in the commercial airliner industry. Boeing took on a radically different approach to complete the project.

Boeing “transform[ed] itself from a vertically integrated enterprise that does most of its own product design, supplier management, manufacturing, and integration into a more virtual enterprise that relies heavily on suppliers” (Moad, 2007). With this drastic change came new advantages as well as challenges in Boeing's supply chain management. In addition Boeing developed a comprehensive customer relationship management system, Goldcare, which sought to reduce costs and increase quality of service for their customers

Products and Services

Just like there are multitude reasons for failure, but it is rarely if ever the result of direct competition, there are many ways to succeed, but rarely if ever by following competitors closely. The strategic route to success postulated in an article by Porter (2006) entitled “What is strategy?” was as simple and as complex as: “Do it differently” (Staw, 2008). Porter did not have ...