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An analysis of the competitive actions of boeing and airbus in the aerospace industry based on the competitive dynamics model.

1. Introduction

2. literature review, 2.1. the concept of competitive dynamics, 2.2. concept of open innovation, 4. background information, 4.1. history of airbus, 4.2. history of boeing, 4.3. diversification of boeing: comparison with airbus, 4.3.1. boeing defense, space, and security (bds), 4.3.2. boeing global service (bgs), 5. aerospace industry, 5.1. overall industry, 5.2. open innovation, 6. boeing’s strengths, 6.1. risk-taking culture, 6.2. r&d investment and training personnel, 7. competitive dynamics between boeing and airbus, 7.1. competition between boeing and airbus in the aerospace industry, 7.2. boeing and airbus—action and reaction in m&a, 7.3. boeing and airbus—action and reaction in launching aircraft, 7.3.1. boeing—b747, 7.3.2. airbus—a380, 7.3.3. boeing—b787 dreamliner (based on 7e7 project), 7.3.4. airbus—a350, a350 xwb and a330neo, 7.4. strategic difference between boeing and airbus, 7.4.1. core model—jumbo jet vs. supersonic aircraft, 7.4.2. forecasts regarding the aerospace industry—direct point-to-point model vs. hub-and-spoke model, 8. discussion, 9. conclusions, author contributions, institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest, boeing commercial aircraft models.

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Woo, A.; Park, B.; Sung, H.; Yong, H.; Chae, J.; Choi, S. An Analysis of the Competitive Actions of Boeing and Airbus in the Aerospace Industry Based on the Competitive Dynamics Model. J. Open Innov. Technol. Mark. Complex. 2021 , 7 , 192. https://doi.org/10.3390/joitmc7030192

Woo A, Park B, Sung H, Yong H, Chae J, Choi S. An Analysis of the Competitive Actions of Boeing and Airbus in the Aerospace Industry Based on the Competitive Dynamics Model. Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity . 2021; 7(3):192. https://doi.org/10.3390/joitmc7030192

Woo, Ayoung, Bokyung Park, Hyekyung Sung, Hyunjin Yong, Jiyeon Chae, and Seungho Choi. 2021. "An Analysis of the Competitive Actions of Boeing and Airbus in the Aerospace Industry Based on the Competitive Dynamics Model" Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity 7, no. 3: 192. https://doi.org/10.3390/joitmc7030192

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Leadership, Engineering and Ethical Clashes at Boeing

• Original Research/Scholarship
• Published: 15 February 2021
• Volume 27 , article number  12 , ( 2021 )

Cite this article

• Elaine Englehardt 1 ,
• Patricia H. Werhane 2 , 3 &
• Lisa H. Newton 4  

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When there are disasters in our society, whether on an individual, organizational or systemic level, individuals or groups of individuals are often singled out for blame, and commonly it is assumed that the alleged culprits engaged in deliberate misdeeds. But sometimes, at least, these disasters occur not because of deliberate malfeasance, but rather because of complex organizational and systemic circumstances that result in these negative outcomes. Using the Boeing Corporation and its 737 MAX aircraft crashes as an example, this ethical analysis will examine some of the organizational problems that led to changes in management in Boeing and ultimately resulted in the fatal accidents. We will examine ethical blind spots within the company that led to the deadly accidents, and we will study the kinds of circumstances that are particularly acute in organizations such as Boeing, and which contributed to the malfunctions in the 737 MAX and the two resulting crashes. The Boeing 737 MAX example is not a singular case, but rather shares similarities with other engineering disasters such as the Challenger and Columbia explosions, and the ignition switch failures at General Motors each of which seem to have been at least partly the result of organizational shortcomings involving a compromise in commitment to safety. These parallels lead us to conclude that organizational malfeasance poses a serious ethical challenge for engineers and their organizations. We will conclude with some tentative suggestions for avoiding such tragic incidents in the future.

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Utah Valley University, Orem, UT, 84604, USA

Elaine Englehardt

University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

Patricia H. Werhane

DePaul University, Chicago, IL, USA

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Some of this paper benefited from input from Michael Gorman ( 2021 , forthcoming) and commentators at our presentation of this material at the 2019 Association for Practical and Professional Ethics. Some of the essay benefited from Werhane’s ( 2021 , forthcoming) article on the Challenger and Columbia explosions.

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Englehardt, E., Werhane, P.H. & Newton, L.H. Leadership, Engineering and Ethical Clashes at Boeing. Sci Eng Ethics 27 , 12 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-021-00285-x

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Received : 26 April 2020

Accepted : 08 January 2021

Published : 15 February 2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-021-00285-x

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TOWS Matrix

To succeed in the target environment, Boeing will have to consider the opportunities and threats that lurk in the global economy environment, as well as have a clear understanding of its weaknesses and strengths. For these purposes, one should consider the TOWS Matrix. Though often mistakenly considered the exact copy of a SWOT analysis (Fleisher & Bensoussan, 2015), the matrix offers a more detailed and nearly comprehensive analysis of the external and internal factors that affect the performance of a company.

Table 1. TOWS Matrix.

It is noteworthy, though, that some of the internal characteristics of Boeing that have been marked as weaknesses may turn out to be its strengths in the long run. For instance, the increasingly high costs of R&D can be viewed as investments into the search for a new brand image and product that will help Boeing stand out of the range of organizations that are likely to enter the global market shortly.

Strategic Alternatives

At present, the organization has several strategic alternatives that could also used to propel it to the top. The emphasis on the marketing approach is one of the strategies that can advised. To be more specific, one should consider focusing on the redesign of the brand image of the organization, as well as a massive upgrade of its brand product. Despite the fact that both have suffered significant changes over the course of the organization’s development, they still need a consistent update which will, nevertheless, allow the firm retain its unique characteristics and remain memorable for the target audience.

Furthermore, given the fact that a comparatively small amount of funds has been provided for the defense industry, Boeing may have to consider other areas for which it may produce its aircraft. For example, commercial airplanes, space aircraft, and security vehicles production will need to be considered an opportunity. Given the recent growth of the tourism industry, it would be reasonable for Boeing to focus on the design of commercial airplanes as the foundation for its further marketing framework and the process of building a customer base (Parker, Stranghoener, & Womack, 2016).

Customer relationships

Enhancing the customer loyalty levels and building the customer base on which the organization will be able to exert its influence should also be viewed among the primary strategic alternatives. As seen from the description of the primary strategies that the organization will have to consider, improving the communication with the target population is one of Boeing’s subgoals – in fact, the enhancement of the quality standards listed above among the essential objectives to be accomplished is aimed at increasing Boeing’s popularity with the target customers. However, it could be argued that the firm would win from a more explicit focus on customers and their needs.

Particularly, it will be crucial to establish not only relationships with the current customers but also the foundation for successful communication with the future ones. The identified objective can be attained by reconsidering the current communication approaches and the pricing strategy. For instance, it would be reasonable to introduce a different discount policy into the organizational setting and, therefore, offer loyal customers more options. Specifically, apart from seasonal and general discounts, Boeing marketers may consider the options for including the discounts for regular customers, as well as seasonal discounts and other options for clients to save money.

Pros and Cons

It should be borne in mind that the suggested frameworks have their advantages and problems. As far as the strengths of the strategy are concerned, Boeing may enjoy a number of opportunities as far as the expansion of its services and the further operations are concerned, yet the adoption of a relatively new approach also implies that the firm is likely to face a number of risks. Therefore, a sustainable approach toward risk management must be designed.

The current strategy

The fact that the organization is clearly looking for new and improved ways of diversifying its revenue stream shows that, from a financial perspective, Boeing is developing at a rather fast pace. The company is clearly seeking new ways of managing the challenges of the global economy and exploring new opportunities for maintaining loyalty levels among its shareholders high.

In light of the fact that there have been significant defense cuts over the past year, there are reasons for Boeing to reconsider its current approach toward the use of its financial assets and design a more elaborate approach toward managing its financial resources. However, keeping the shareholders satisfied and retaining their credibility is also important in keeping the top position in the global market. Therefore, one must give the current strategy credit for balancing between the needs of shareholders and those of the organization.

One must also admit that the strategy currently deployed at Boeing is far from being inept; in fact, it fits the current situation quite well. Given the issues associated with the lack of financing for Boeing’s defense-related products, using Saab’s assistance as the means of retrieving the required amount of financial resources and reducing the associated threats can be viewed as a rather smart move. More importantly, the fact that Boeing’s leaders do not abandon the defense area as the niche that they can fill with their products should be deemed as an important step in retaining the company’s position in the global market.

Furthermore, there is a need to reduce the costs of R&D, which have gone through the roof by now, and at the same time promote an active increase in product quality levels. Thus, the principles of sustainability as the means of distributing the available financial resources between the company’s departments and stakeholders so that the necessary processes could continue should be deemed as the only possible solution in the current situation.

However, the framework suggested for the development of the organization has its problems. The design of a powerful competitive advantage is a challenging task, and the increasingly large number of competitors that have new and exciting opportunities to offer to the target population pose a significant threat to the financial and economic well-being of the organization. Furthermore, the emphasis on the relationships between the company and its specific stakeholders, primarily, its customers and shareholders, may suggest that other aspects of the communication process, such as maintaining an open conversation with employees, might be overlooked. As a result, there is a threat that the levels of satisfaction among the staff members will inevitably start to shrink, thus, leading to a drop in quality levels.

Furthermore, relying far too heavily on the opportunities that the KC-46 program has provided is bound to make Boeing vulnerable in the global market. With new companies exploring new opportunities and designing new and innovative products, Boeing needs to maintain the required rates of product diversity as well. In fact, the approach described above also suggests that product diversification must be viewed as a crucial step in improving the current situation that Boeing is facing.

The alternatives

Other available solutions, though not as popular as the framework that Boeing is currently implementing, should not be dismissed as unfeasible in the context of the global market. Quite on the contrary, some of them offer a range of ideas that may be used to develop a viable solution for the organization’s current issues. The associated issues are, however, rather complex and, therefore, need an elaborate management approach. For instance, even though Boeing has been quite successful in Japan so far, building more trustworthy relationships and forming a closer bond may become a problem. The reasons for the concern are linked to the delay in the introduction of 787 Dreamer into the Japanese market (Schwarz & Busby, 2014).

Recommended Strategy

Corporate strategy.

As stressed above, it is important for Boeing not to lose its opportunities as far as the production of defense-related goods is concerned. Granted that Boeing’s leaders have been placing a strong emphasis on the subject matter by exploring the opportunities for partnerships, particularly, developing strong business ties with Saab is worth appreciation, more needs to be done.

Even though Saab is a widely recognized brand, partnership with a well-known organization can only do so much as long as Boeing delivers the product of the finest quality and is capable of developing its own unique competitive advantage. Therefore, apart from focusing extensively on the cooperation with Saab and the Japanese organizations that will help Boeing strive in the Asian market, the company will also have to consider redesigning some of its internal processes. To be more accurate, closer attention must be paid to the issues associated with the quality of the product and the introduction of innovative features and goods.

At the same time, the fact that Boeing must meet the needs of its stakeholders must be borne in mind. Therefore, the company will have to distribute its resources in a very careful and elaborate manner so that the R&D processes should not be stalled and at the same time the shareholders could remain satisfied. For this purpose, it is recommended to redesign the approach toward the resource management by using a cost-efficient approach toward the distribution of the company’s financial resources. Curbing the staff’s overtime salaries, while being an admittedly undesirable strategy, must be listed among the primary tools for managing the issue.

Seeing that the suggested approach proved to be rather efficient the previous year, it might also help Boeing sustain its profit margins in 2017 as well: “”By curbing exempt overtime pay, Boeing is challenging leaders and employees to come up with work solutions that curb the need to work overtime,” said the memo, which was first reported by the Seattle Times” (Scott, 2014, par. 6). Even though the identified measure is rather harsh and does not reflect the organization’s ethical stance on employee relationships, it must be viewed as a temporary measure that will help the company strive in the hostile economy. In fact, there are opportunities for reducing the harm that the identified approach causes to the employees:

Boeing’s white-collar engineering union said the new policy likely would not affect many of its 19,000 members, since they are governed by labor contracts. Professional engineers receive regular pay plus $6.50 an hour when they work past 40 hours. A group of about 20 pilots do not have that provision. (Scott, 2014, par. 8)

Hence, the corporate strategy that the company should consider as the means of advancing in the global market and at the same time maintaining the levels of satisfaction among the essential stakeholders high will have to include a sustainable approach toward the management of financial resources. Curbing overtime payments is one of the ways of handling the current financial issues. In light of the fact that the company will receive support from Saab and its Japanese partners, the suggested framework is bound to be rather efficient.

Therefore, it is crucial that the organization should determine the way in which it should build relationships with its stakeholders. Even though the concept of meeting the needs of all stakeholders involved and maintaining satisfaction levels high among employees, customers, and shareholders alike is typically viewed as the preferable approach, Boeing currently cannot allow taking the specified avenue due to the budget restrictions.

It would be wrong to assume that the identified strategy is bound to become the foundation for the future system of corporate values in the organization. Boeing does not have to reconsider its concept of meeting the needs of the people involved, and has to keep its ethical standard high. Furthermore, given the support that it will supposedly receive from Saab and its Japanese partners, the firm may soon be able to return to the standard framework that requires providing all stakeholders involved (i.e., employees, business partners, customers, suppliers, etc.) with equal opportunities and advantages. However, at present, refusing from the concept of overtime cuts as the way of managing the financial issues will imply suffering significant losses. As a result, job cuts may ensue, leading to even more devastating outcomes for the employees, the shareholders, and even customers, since, with the drop in the number of staff members, product quality is likely to suffer extensively.

Herein lies the gravity of adopting the sustainable framework that will help create a foundation for a gradual improvement. Several strategies for managing change successfully in the context of Boeing’s corporate environment can be suggested. To be more specific, it can be assumed that Kotter’s eight-step model can be used as the means of promoting change and compelling the staff members to accept the new approach toward the management of the corporate processes.

Naturally, it would be wrong to expect that the introduction of changes and new rules, especially as far as the quality improvement and the payment issues are concerned, will be welcomed by all employees. Quite on the contrary, the staff members are likely to express negativity to the idea of facing changes in the corporate financial policy in the payment area and at the same time being forced to excel in their performance.

This is the point at which the strategies for enhancing motivation levels should be brought up. It is crucial to design the leadership framework based on the combination of the transformational and visionary approaches so that the personnel could have a clear role model that they could follow. More importantly, the use of the said leadership approaches will help avoid a rise in employee dissatisfaction levels. Indeed, once the relevant values and corporate philosophies are integrated into the target environment, the staff members are likely to agree about the necessity to promote change and meet the new quality standards.

Business strategy

As stressed above, Boeing is currently in desperate need for renewing its competitive advantage and updating its branding strategy. Even though the organization and its products have become a household name for the residents of numerous states, Boeing needs to introduce something new that could entice and attract an even larger number of customers. At the time when a range of competitors enter the global market on a regular basis and offer an innovative service or product, Boeing cannot afford to be old-fashioned. Instead, it must be viewed as an innovative organization that is willing to cater to the needs of an extremely diverse population and can succeed in every domain in which it operates.

It should be noted, though, that there has already been a significant shift in Boeing’s approach toward building a competitive advantage and developing its business strategy in the realm of the global market. The significance of improving the technological aspects of the firm’s performance has been the foundation for the dominant business model for years.

However, in the 2000s, Boeing’s leaders developed a propensity toward focusing on the firm’s cost efficacy and, therefore, reducing the expenses taken in the process of producing aircraft, managing the supply chain, etc. (The Boeing Company, 2017). In light of the globalization process and the need to build a supply chain that will help introduce the firm into the global community, the identified approach seems to be quite legitimate. However, the idea of making the expenses drop is at odds with Boeing’s need to invest in the R&D process and come up with the product of high technological efficacy.

One might argue that the specified issue could be addressed by helping the technical community integrate into the global network and, thus, use the available resources to design high-quality products, at the same time maintaining the costs relatively low. The said framework is also likely to allow the technical team to coordinate their actions with the strategies designed by the representatives of the financial department; therefore, the resulting approach will not affect the company’s financial well-being as badly as it might otherwise.

In other words, the emphasis must be placed on the cooperation between different departments of the company and the accurate transfer of information. The identified objectives will allow maintaining the quality levels high, at the same time preventing the firm from taking significant expenses due to being misinformed. Furthermore, the number of errors will be reduced significantly, allowing for a rapid increase in quality levels in the organization.

Consequently, the redesign of the business strategy must be geared toward the consistent improvement of the supply chain, the communication processes, and the product quality at the same time. The simultaneous update of the identified systems will become a possibility as soon as every employee at Boeing realizes that the corporate processes are linked and, therefore, relevant data must be shared actively across departments.

Furthermore, in order to attain the goals related to the improvement in the product quality standards, Boeing will have to reconsider some of its performance metrics. Although the identified approach concerns primarily the issue of meeting the needs of the employees, it will also help the organization manage its production quality. Particularly, the introduction of the new performance metrics will permit identifying the changes in the organization’s progress and, therefore, either encourage the improvements or consider the ways of handling the hiccups in Boeing’s performance:

Beginning in 2017, annual incentive awards and performance awards under our long-term incentive program will no longer pay out based on one- and three-year economic profit. Instead, they will pay out based 50% on free cash flow, 25% on core earnings per share, or EPS, and 25% on revenue, in each case during the appropriate performance period. (The Boeing Company, 2017, p. 33)

Furthermore, the introduction of the identified approach will allow meeting the needs of the company’s stakeholders in a more efficient manner, at the same time introducing orderliness and a rigid system into the management of the stakeholders’ interests. The use of the metric elements such as free cash flow levels, earnings per share, and revenue as the foundation for defining the financial strategy will be a perfect solution to the financial resources management issue since the logic behind the distribution of the financial resources will imply that an analysis of not only internal but also external factors should be conducted. As a result, an adequate distribution of the company’s financial assets can be expected. The business strategy described above will serve as the foundation for promoting a sustainable use of financial resources in the organization.

Functional strategy

The current emphasis on the R&D processes is an admittedly important step in helping the organization gain influence in the environment of the global economy. Even though there are understandable concerns about the possible financial risks that Boeing will face in case the R&D processes will not lead to the improvement in the service and product quality, the analysis of what makes Boeing efficient in the global market is the most important objective for the organization right now.

At present, it is crucial to locate the opportunities for developing an impressive competitive advantage that could set Boeing’s aircraft aside from the vehicles produced by the rest of the companies operating in the same industry. As a result, the premises for identifying the niche that the company will be able to take and helping it gain weight in the global economy realm can be created.

The focus on the R&D processes is also imperative due to the fact that new entrants in the transportation industry have a plethora of innovative solutions, with which Boeing needs to keep up. The fact that Boeing has a very long presence in the global economy can be viewed as both an advantage and the source of problems. On the one hand, knowing the identified economic environment for so long is important to determine the current trends and be able to make prognoses as far as the further changes in demand among the target population are concerned.

On the other hand, even the organization as popular as Boeing cannot remain in the spotlight forever unless innovative solutions are offered to the target population on a regular basis. Boeing, in its turn, has been offering a rather homogenous product for a consecutive time period; as a result, its popularity may have worn out. Furthermore, with public attention being focused on Boeing for so long, the organization leaders may feel that they have enough power to keep offering the same product to the customers and still take the top position in the target market. Both issues are topical for the company at present, and they need to be addressed by placing a heavy emphasis on the R&D processes. The search for new opportunities for quality improvement is bound to help Boeing retain its competitiveness.

The shareholder issue mentioned above will also require extensive support from the organization. As stressed above, it is imperative that the shareholders’ interests should not be infringed and that they should receive the profits that they expect from an organization of Boeing’s caliber. More importantly, it is also crucial that the needs of executives should be met along with those of shareholders. The approach that Boeing is currently using should be viewed as a temporary solution to the financial problems faced in the competitive global economy:

The Board remains committed to ensuring that executives maintain meaningful stock ownership in the Company, which further aligns the interests of executives with the interests of shareholders. As evidence of this long-standing commitment, senior executives must own Boeing stock valued at three to six times their annual base salary, depending on executive grade. In 2016, the Board enhanced these requirements by requiring executive officers to hold all newlyvested stock until their stock holding requirements are met. (The Boeing Company, 2017, p. 27)

The idea of maintaining the value of the stock is in direct proportion to the salary of the executives should be mentioned among the crucial steps toward keeping the target audience satisfied. The drop in the difference between the salary of the shareholders and the value of their shares can be viewed as a sensible compromise that Boeing must make in order to retain its economic sustainability in the global economy realm. The specified approach help align the interests of executives and shareholders so that they could strive toward the common goal and focus on making the organization competitive in the aircraft industry.

Furthermore, the improvement of the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) framework can be viewed as the means of managing the issues associated with the financial sustainability of the organization. Even though the system has been deployed successfully in the company, it still needs to be refined in order to become the foundation for a consistent improvement in the company’s’ quality and, therefore, a continuous growth of its profit margins. To be more specific, it is crucial that the ERP system should be integrated with the operations of the rest of Boeing’s departments. The reasons for the identified step to be taken are quite simple.

As stressed above, facilitating the transfer of the relevant information, as well as making sure that the crucial data is available to all members of the company, and that the employees should be updated on the essential changes, is crucial to avoid errors and misunderstandings that lead to an increase in the number of defects and, therefore, a gradual drop in quality levels. ERP, in its turn, can be viewed as a framework for integrating the basic processes that occur in the organization. As a result, the employees at Boeing will be able to see the firm as not a contraption of different departments but a cohesive whole, i.e., a system in which every single element represented by a corresponding department matters.

The enhancement of the role of ERP in the functioning of the organization, as well as the promotion of collaboration and information sharing among the members of all units and departments, is, therefore, imperative for the successful implementation of the changes required to make the company develop a strong competitive advantage. Furthermore, ERP will become the basis for an unceasing quality improvement in the organization. As stressed above, the framework can be used to address the issue of defects, thus, increasing the repeatability and reproducibility levels at Boeing.

The fact that the ERP system has already tested positively in the target industry can be viewed as the proof that the approach must be incorporated into the Boeing’s operational design. Indeed, according to a recent study, the use of ERP has helped not only improve the production processes but also increase safety levels to a considerable extent:

IFS Defence provides maintenance and logistics solutions for aerospace and defense. IFS Applications is a component-based extended ERP suite built on service-oriented-architecture technology. The suite has more than 100 business components. Customers choose the ones they require, such as IFS Financials, IFS Sales and Service or IFS Maintenance. (Canaday, 2013, par. 1)

Therefore, the introduction of ERP principles into the functional strategy of the organization is an essential step in facilitating the environment in which the employees will feel motivated and enabled to excel in their performance. The emphasis placed on the communication process will serve as the basis for a rapid improvement in the quality of the output due to the reduction in the number of misunderstandings and misconceptions between the representatives of different departments. In other words, the ERP framework will become the tool for aligning the essential corporate processes.

Furthermore, it could be argued that the use of the ERP tools will produce the results that will inform the further changes in the financial strategy of the organization. For instance, once there is the lack of support for a particular aspect of Boeing’s operations, not only the employees but also the managers and the company’s leaders will become instantly aware of the subject matter. As a result, the necessary changes in the distribution of funds among the departments will be made within the shortest amount of time possible, therefore, creating prerequisites for managing the problem in a manner as efficient and expeditious as possible.

The concepts of ethics and compliance are currently the key direction in which Boeing is going with its corporate policies. One must admit that the specified approach has its advantages, the opportunities for promoting change actively without facing significant resistance among the staff members being the key one.

Furthermore, the enhancement of compliance allows for minimizing the number of conflicts that occur in the organizational setting. As a result, the decisions are made faster and from a more objective point of view in the environment of the organization. Moreover, the concepts associated with cooperation, mutual assistance, and support can be promoted more easily in the context of Boeing’s organizational environment. Therefore, Boeing has created the system of policies that is linked directly to the firm’s vision, mission, and philosophy. The enhancement of the relevant qualities in the staff members, e.g., the promotion of the Corporate Social Responsibility among the employees, becomes much easier once the identified policy is applied since it makes the target population understand the importance of following the set regulations.

That being said, Boeing could use an update in its policies to make them more resistant to the negative effects of the external factors. With the recent changes in the U.S. state policies, which can be witnessed since Trump was elected as the president, Boeing has been struggling to keep its corporate policies together and maintain integrity in the new environment:

While a company such as Boeing supports a massive manufacturing presence in the US, it has cultivated a broad network of international partners that have invested decades and billions of dollars into relationships with Boeing. These partners have deep ties to their local governments and business communities, but the new administration’s hardline stance on globalization threatens those bonds. (Zhang, 2017, par. 4)

However, the challenges that the firm is facing at present may take its toll on the quality of the communication process, take the best of the staff, and compel the firm to alter its values toward a lesser focus on diversity, abandonment of the search for efficient communication approaches, etc. Therefore, the measures for making Boeing’s policies stronger must be introduced into the company’s design. For this purpose, one may consider the idea of enhancing the significance of corporate citizenship in the organizational environment, as well as the importance of multiculturalist principles.

It is, therefore, strongly recommended that Boeing should maintain its integrity and continue cooperation with its foreign partners despite the changes in the foreign policy of the state. Even though developing ties with foreign organizations may require larger investments that it used to, Boeing’s leaders still have to engage in the active development of intercultural dialogue in the context of the global market. Thus, the organization will be able to create a large supply chain and build the competitive advantage that will set it aside from the rest of the firms operating in the specified industry.

The Boeing Company. (2016). Boeing in brief . Web.

The Boeing Company. (2017). 2017 annual meeting of shareholders . Web.

Canaday, H. (2013). Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems with aircraft MRO capabilities . Aviation Week Network . Web.

Drew, J. (2015). Japan chooses Boeing KC-46, halting Airbus tanker winning streak . Flight Global . Web.

Fleisher, C. S., & Bensoussan, B. E. (2015). Business and competitive analysis: Effective application of new and classic methods . New York, NY: FT Press.

Parker, A., Stranghoener, S., & Womack, J. (2016). Joint supply cost models. Boeing Technical Journal, 1 (1), 1-15.

Schwarz, L. A., & Busby, J. (2014). The 787 Dreamliner: Will it be a dream or nightmare for Boeing Co.? Journal of Case Research in Business and Economics, 1 (1), 1-20.

Scott, A. (2014). Boeing to curb overtime for U.S. salaried workers to reduce costs . Reuters . Web.

Sink, J., & Wasson, E. (2017). Trump plans historic cuts across government to fund defense . Bloomberg . Web.

Zhang, B. (2017). Trump’s ‘America First’ policies are catapulting Boeing into dangerous territory . Business Insider . Web.

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Boeing and the Dark Age of American Manufacturing

Somewhere along the line, the plane maker lost interest in making its own planes. Can it rediscover its engineering soul?

Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

T he sight of Bill Boeing was a familiar one on the factory floor. His office was in the building next to the converted boatyard where workers lathed the wood, sewed the fabric wings, and fixed the control wires of the Boeing Model C airplane. there is no authority except facts. facts are obtained by accurate observation read a plaque affixed outside the door. And what could need closer observation than the process of his aircraft being built? One day in 1916, Boeing spotted an imperfectly cut wing rib, dropped it to the floor, and slowly stomped it to bits. “I, for one, will close up shop rather than send out work of this kind,” he declared.

When David Calhoun, the soon-to-be-lame-duck CEO of the company Boeing founded, made a rare appearance on the shop floor in Seattle one day this past January, circumstances were decidedly different. Firmly a member of the CEO class, schooled at the knee of General Electric’s Jack Welch, Calhoun had not strolled over from next door but flown some 2,300 miles from Boeing’s headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. And he was not there to observe slipshod work before it found its way into the air—it already had. A few weeks earlier, the door of a Boeing 737 had fallen out mid-flight. In the days following his visit, Calhoun’s office admitted that it still didn’t know quite what had gone wrong, because it didn’t know how the plane had been put together in the first place. The door’s restraining bolts had either been screwed in wrong, or not at all. Boeing couldn’t say , because, as it told astonished regulators, the company had “no records of the work being performed.”

The two scenes tell us the peculiar story of a plane maker that, over 25 years, slowly but very deliberately extracted itself from the business of making planes. For nearly 40 years the company built the 737 fuselage itself in the same plant that turned out its B-29 and B-52 bombers. In 2005 it sold this facility to a private-investment firm, keeping the axle grease at arm’s length and notionally shifting risk, capital costs, and labor woes off its books onto its “supplier.” Offloading , Boeing called it. Meanwhile the tail, landing gear, flight controls, and other essentials were outsourced to factories around the world owned by others, and shipped to Boeing for final assembly, turning the company that created the Jet Age into something akin to a glorified gluer-together of precast model-airplane kits. Boeing’s latest screwups vividly dramatize a point often missed in laments of America’s manufacturing decline: that when global economic forces carried off some U.S. manufacturers for good, even the ones that stuck around lost interest in actually making stuff.

The past 30 years may well be remembered as a dark age of U.S. manufacturing. Boeing’s decline illustrates everything that went wrong to bring us here. Fortunately, it also offers a lesson in how to get back out.

I n Bill Boeing’s day, the word manufactory had cachet. You could bank at the Manufacturers Trust. Philadelphia socialites golfed at the Manufacturers’ Club. Plans for the newly consecrated Harvard Business School called for a working factory on campus. The business heroes of the day—Ford, Edison, Firestone—had risen from the shop floor.

There, they had pioneered an entirely new way of making things. The American system of production—featuring interchangeable parts, specialized machine tools, moving assembly lines—was a huge leap beyond European methods of craft production. And it produced lopsided margins of victory for the likes of Ford, GM, and Boeing. To coordinate these complex new systems, two new occupations arose: the industrial engineer, who spoke the language of the shop floor, and the professional financial manager, who spoke the language of accounting.

Charlie Warzel: Flying is weird right now

At first the engineers held sway. In a 1930 article for Aviation News , a Boeing engineer explained how the company’s inspectors “continually supervise the fabrication of the many thousands of parts entering into the assemblage of a single plane.” Philip Johnson, an engineer, succeeded Bill Boeing as CEO; he then passed the company to yet another engineer, Clairmont Egtvedt, who not only managed production of the B-17 bomber from the executive suite, but personally helped design it.

After the Second World War, America enjoyed three decades of dominance by sticking with methods it had used to win it. At the same time, a successor was developing, largely unnoticed, amid the scarcities of defeated Japan. The upstart auto executive Eiji Toyoda had visited Ford’s works and found that, however much he admired the systems, they couldn’t be replicated in Japan. He couldn’t afford, for instance, the hundreds of machine tools specialized to punch out exactly one part at the touch of a button. Although his employees would have to make do with a few general-purpose stamping presses, he gave these skilled workers immense freedom to find the most efficient way to run them. The end result turned out to be radical: Costs fell and errors dropped in a renewable cycle of improvement, or kaizen .

What emerged was a different conception of the corporation. If the managerial bureaucrats in the other departments were to earn their keep, they needed a thorough understanding of the shop floor, or gemba (roughly “place of making value”). The so-called Gemba Walk required their routine presence at each step until they could comprehend the assembly of the whole. Otherwise they risked becoming muda —waste.

When the wave of Japanese competition finally crashed on corporate America, those best equipped to understand it—the engineers—were no longer in charge. American boardrooms had been handed over to the finance people. And they were hypnotized by the new doctrine of shareholder value, which provided a rationale for their ascendance but little incentive for pursuing long-term improvements or sustainable approaches to cost control. Their pay packages rewarded short-term spikes in stock price. There were lots of ways to produce those.

Which brings us to the hinge point of 1990, when a trio of MIT researchers published The Machine That Changed the World , which both named the Japanese system—“lean production” — and urged corporate America to learn from it. Just then, the Japanese economy crashed, easing the pressure on U.S. firms. In the years that followed, American manufacturers instead doubled down on outsourcing, offshoring, and financial engineering. This round of wounds was self-inflicted. Already infused with a stench of decay, manufacturing was written off as yesterday’s activity.

At GE, which produced three of Boeing’s last four CEOs, manufacturing came to be seen as “grunt work,” as the former GE executive David Cote recently told Fortune ’s Shawn Tully. Motorola—founded as Galvin Manufacturing and famed for its religious focus on quality—lost its lead in mobile-phone making after it leaned into software and services. Intel’s bunny-suited fab workers were the face of high-tech manufacturing prowess until the company ceded hardware leadership to Asian rivals. “Having once pioneered the development of this extraordinary technology,” the current Intel CEO, Pat Gelsinger, wrote recently , “we now find ourselves at the mercy of the most fragile global supply chain in the world.”

Phil Condit, the talented engineer who had overseen design of the hugely successful 777, was atop Boeing when I visited the company in late 2000. He was no stranger to the shop floor. Traversing Boeing’s Everett plant in a golf cart, he pointed out the horizontal tail fin stretching above us. Hard to believe it was larger than the 737’s wing , he marveled. Waiting back in his office—still located on the bank of the Duwamish River but greatly swollen by the recent merger with McDonnell Douglas—was a different sort of glee. “Wow! Double wow!” his mother had emailed him, referring to Boeing’s closing stock price that day. And, it would soon emerge, he wanted to get some distance from what he described to the Puget Sound Business Journal as “how-do-you-design-an-airplane stuff.” The next year, he moved Boeing’s headquarters to Chicago, pulling the top brass away from the shop floor just as the company was embarking on a radically new approach to airplane assembly.

Its newest plane, the 787 Dreamliner, would not be an in-house production. Instead Boeing would farm out the designing and building to a network of “partner” companies—each effectively its own mini-Boeing with its own supply chain to manage. “It used to be you’d have some Boeing people develop the blueprints, then march over and say, ‘Hey, would you build this for me?’” Richard Safran, an analyst at Seaport Research Partners and a former aerospace engineer, told me. “Now, instead, you’re asking them to design it, to integrate it, to do the R&D.”

The allures of this “capital light” approach were many: Troublesome unions, costly machine shops, and development budgets would all become someone else’s problem. Key financial metrics would instantly improve as costs shifted to other firms’ balance sheets. With its emphasis on less, the approach bore a superficial resemblance to lean production. But where lean production pushed know-how back onto the shop floor, this pushed the shop floor and its know-how out the door altogether.

Beyond that were the problems that a Boeing engineer, L. J. Hart-Smith, had foreseen in a prescient white paper that he presented at a 2001 Boeing technical symposium. With outsourcing came the possibility that parts wouldn’t fit together correctly on arrival. “In order to minimize these potential problems,” Hart-Smith warned, “it is necessary for the prime contractor to provide on-site quality, supplier-management, and sometimes technical support. If this is not done, the performance of the prime manufacturer can never exceed the capabilities of the least proficient of the suppliers.”

Boeing didn’t listen. Wall Street dismissed Hart-Smith’s paper as a “rant,” and Boeing put each supplier in charge of its own quality control. When those controls failed, Boeing had to bear the cost of fixing flawed components. Most troubling was the dangerous feedback loop Hart-Smith foresaw. Accounting-wise, those fixes, which in reality are the costs of outsourcing, would instead appear as overhead—creating the impression that in-house work was expensive and furthering the rationale for offloading even more of the manufacturing process.

In the short term, this all worked wonders on Boeing’s balance sheet: Its stock rose more than 600 percent from 2010 to 2019. Then the true folly of this approach made its inevitable appearance when two strikingly similar crashes caused by faulty software on Boeing planes killed a total of 346 people.

James Surowiecki: What’s gone wrong at Boeing

Today, if you stand along the Seattle waterfront long enough, sooner or later you’ll catch sight of a train headed south carrying the distinctive shape of a Boeing 737. Though it’s colored a metallic green and missing its tail—clearly not the finished product—it’s the kind of thing you point to and say, Look kids, a Boeing plane’s on that train! Not so. The logomark on the side spells it out: Spirit AeroSystems of Wichita, Kansas, has built this fuselage, which isn’t coming from Boeing. It’s going to Boeing.

A plane is a complex system in which the malfunction of one piece can produce catastrophic failure of the whole. Assembly must be tightly choreographed. But now—especially with Boeing continually trying to wring costs from its suppliers—there were many more chances for errors to creep in. And when FAA investigators finally toured the premises of Spirit AeroSystems—maker of the blown-out door as well as the fuselage it was supposed to fit in—they did not find a tight operation. They found one door seal being lubricated with Dawn liquid dish soap and cleaned with a wet cheesecloth, and another checked with a hotel-room key card.

A dark age doesn’t descend all at once. The process of emerging from one also takes time. It must begin with a recognition that something has been lost. Boeing’s fall just might have provided that rush of clarity. You could be from the 12th century and still know that soap and cheesecloth aren’t for making flying machines. Boeing’s chief financial officer recently admitted that the company got “a little too far ahead of itself on the topic of outsourcing.” It is in talks to reacquire Spirit AeroSystems and is already making the composite wings of its next-gen plane, the 777X, in-house at a new, billion-dollar complex outside Seattle. “Aerospace Executives Finally Rediscover the Shop Floor,” Aviation Week declared on the cover of a recent issue.

As for the rest of corporate America, one of the strongest signals may be coming from the company Boeing has striven so hard to emulate: GE. Under operations-minded boss Larry Culp, the company is finally—only 40 or so years late—pushing itself through a crash course in lean manufacturing. It is belatedly yielding to the reality that workers on the gemba are far better at figuring out more efficient ways of making things than remote bureaucrats with spreadsheet abstractions.

In the crucial field of semiconductors, meanwhile, Intel has recognized that Moore’s Law (the doubling of computing power roughly every 18 months) flows not from above but from manufacturing advances it once dominated. It has undertaken a “ death march ,” in the words of CEO Pat Gelsinger, to regain its lost edge on the foundry floor. The CHIPS Act has put a powerful political wind at his back. Green and other incentives are powering a broader, truly seismic surge in spending on new U.S. factories, now going up at three times their normal rate. No other country is experiencing such a buildout.

Add all the capacity you want. It won’t reverse the country’s long decline as a manufacturing superpower if corporate America keeps gurgling its sad, tired story about the impossibility of making things on these shores anymore. It’s a story that helped pour a whole lot of wealth into the executive pockets peddling it. But half a century of self-inflicted damage is enough. The doors have fallen off, and it’s plain for all to see: The story was barely bolted together.

Support for this project was provided by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

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The Boeing 737 MAX: Lessons for Engineering Ethics

Joseph herkert.

1 North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC USA

Jason Borenstein

2 Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA USA

Keith Miller

3 University of Missouri – St. Louis, St. Louis, MO USA

The crash of two 737 MAX passenger aircraft in late 2018 and early 2019, and subsequent grounding of the entire fleet of 737 MAX jets, turned a global spotlight on Boeing’s practices and culture. Explanations for the crashes include: design flaws within the MAX’s new flight control software system designed to prevent stalls; internal pressure to keep pace with Boeing’s chief competitor, Airbus; Boeing’s lack of transparency about the new software; and the lack of adequate monitoring of Boeing by the FAA, especially during the certification of the MAX and following the first crash. While these and other factors have been the subject of numerous government reports and investigative journalism articles, little to date has been written on the ethical significance of the accidents, in particular the ethical responsibilities of the engineers at Boeing and the FAA involved in designing and certifying the MAX. Lessons learned from this case include the need to strengthen the voice of engineers within large organizations. There is also the need for greater involvement of professional engineering societies in ethics-related activities and for broader focus on moral courage in engineering ethics education.

Introduction

In October 2018 and March 2019, Boeing 737 MAX passenger jets crashed minutes after takeoff; these two accidents claimed nearly 350 lives. After the second incident, all 737 MAX planes were grounded worldwide. The 737 MAX was an updated version of the 737 workhorse that first began flying in the 1960s. The crashes were precipitated by a failure of an Angle of Attack (AOA) sensor and the subsequent activation of new flight control software, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). The MCAS software was intended to compensate for changes in the size and placement of the engines on the MAX as compared to prior versions of the 737. The existence of the software, designed to prevent a stall due to the reconfiguration of the engines, was not disclosed to pilots until after the first crash. Even after that tragic incident, pilots were not required to undergo simulation training on the 737 MAX.

In this paper, we examine several aspects of the case, including technical and other factors that led up to the crashes, especially Boeing’s design choices and organizational tensions internal to the company, and between Boeing and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). While the case is ongoing and at this writing, the 737 MAX has yet to be recertified for flight, our analysis is based on numerous government reports and detailed news accounts currently available. We conclude with a discussion of specific lessons for engineers and engineering educators regarding engineering ethics.

Overview of 737 MAX History and Crashes

In December 2010, Boeing’s primary competitor Airbus announced the A320neo family of jetliners, an update of their successful A320 narrow-body aircraft. The A320neo featured larger, more fuel-efficient engines. Boeing had been planning to introduce a totally new aircraft to replace its successful, but dated, 737 line of jets; yet to remain competitive with Airbus, Boeing instead announced in August 2011 the 737 MAX family, an update of the 737NG with similar engine upgrades to the A320neo and other improvements (Gelles et al. 2019 ). The 737 MAX, which entered service in May 2017, became Boeing’s fastest-selling airliner of all time with 5000 orders from over 100 airlines worldwide (Boeing n.d. a) (See Fig.  1 for timeline of 737 MAX key events).

737 MAX timeline showing key events from 2010 to 2019

The 737 MAX had been in operation for over a year when on October 29, 2018, Lion Air flight JT610 crashed into the Java Sea 13 minutes after takeoff from Jakarta, Indonesia; all 189 passengers and crew on board died. Monitoring from the flight data recorder recovered from the wreckage indicated that MCAS, the software specifically designed for the MAX, forced the nose of the aircraft down 26 times in 10 minutes (Gates 2018 ). In October 2019, the Final Report of Indonesia’s Lion Air Accident Investigation was issued. The Report placed some of the blame on the pilots and maintenance crews but concluded that Boeing and the FAA were primarily responsible for the crash (Republic of Indonesia 2019 ).

MCAS was not identified in the original documentation/training for 737 MAX pilots (Glanz et al. 2019 ). But after the Lion Air crash, Boeing ( 2018 ) issued a Flight Crew Operations Manual Bulletin on November 6, 2018 containing procedures for responding to flight control problems due to possible erroneous AOA inputs. The next day the FAA ( 2018a ) issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive on the same subject; however, the FAA did not ground the 737 MAX at that time. According to published reports, these notices were the first time that airline pilots learned of the existence of MCAS (e.g., Bushey 2019 ).

On March 20, 2019, about four months after the Lion Air crash, Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302 crashed 6 minutes after takeoff in a field 39 miles from Addis Ababa Airport. The accident caused the deaths of all 157 passengers and crew. The Preliminary Report of the Ethiopian Airlines Accident Investigation (Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia 2019 ), issued in April 2019, indicated that the pilots followed the checklist from the Boeing Flight Crew Operations Manual Bulletin posted after the Lion Air crash but could not control the plane (Ahmed et al. 2019 ). This was followed by an Interim Report (Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia 2020 ) issued in March 2020 that exonerated the pilots and airline, and placed blame for the accident on design flaws in the MAX (Marks and Dahir 2020 ). Following the second crash, the 737 MAX was grounded worldwide with the U.S., through the FAA, being the last country to act on March 13, 2019 (Kaplan et al. 2019 ).

Design Choices that Led to the Crashes

As noted above, with its belief that it must keep up with its main competitor, Airbus, Boeing elected to modify the latest generation of the 737 family, the 737NG, rather than design an entirely new aircraft. Yet this raised a significant engineering challenge for Boeing. Mounting larger, more fuel-efficient engines, similar to those employed on the A320neo, on the existing 737 airframe posed a serious design problem, because the 737 family was built closer to the ground than the Airbus A320. In order to provide appropriate ground clearance, the larger engines had to be mounted higher and farther forward on the wings than previous models of the 737 (see Fig.  2 ). This significantly changed the aerodynamics of the aircraft and created the possibility of a nose-up stall under certain flight conditions (Travis 2019 ; Glanz et al. 2019 ).

Boeing 737 MAX (left) compared to Boeing 737NG (right) showing larger 737 MAX engines mounted higher and more forward on the wing.

(Image source: https://www.norebbo.com )

Boeing’s attempt to solve this problem involved incorporating MCAS as a software fix for the potential stall condition. The 737 was designed with two AOA sensors, one on each side of the aircraft. Yet Boeing decided that the 737 MAX would only use input from one of the plane’s two AOA sensors. If the single AOA sensor was triggered, MCAS would detect a dangerous nose-up condition and send a signal to the horizontal stabilizer located in the tail. Movement of the stabilizer would then force the plane’s tail up and the nose down (Travis 2019 ). In both the Lion Air and Ethiopian Air crashes, the AOA sensor malfunctioned, repeatedly activating MCAS (Gates 2018 ; Ahmed et al. 2019 ). Since the two crashes, Boeing has made adjustments to the MCAS, including that the system will rely on input from the two AOA sensors instead of just one. But still more problems with MCAS have been uncovered. For example, an indicator light that would alert pilots if the jet’s two AOA sensors disagreed, thought by Boeing to be standard on all MAX aircraft, would only operate as part of an optional equipment package that neither airline involved in the crashes purchased (Gelles and Kitroeff 2019a ).

Similar to its responses to previous accidents, Boeing has been reluctant to admit to a design flaw in its aircraft, instead blaming pilot error (Hall and Goelz 2019 ). In the 737 MAX case, the company pointed to the pilots’ alleged inability to control the planes under stall conditions (Economy 2019 ). Following the Ethiopian Airlines crash, Boeing acknowledged for the first time that MCAS played a primary role in the crashes, while continuing to highlight that other factors, such as pilot error, were also involved (Hall and Goelz 2019 ). For example, on April 29, 2019, more than a month after the second crash, then Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg defended MCAS by stating:

We've confirmed that [the MCAS system] was designed per our standards, certified per our standards, and we're confident in that process. So, it operated according to those design and certification standards. So, we haven't seen a technical slip or gap in terms of the fundamental design and certification of the approach. (Economy 2019 )

The view that MCAS was not primarily at fault was supported within an article written by noted journalist and pilot William Langewiesche ( 2019 ). While not denying Boeing made serious mistakes, he placed ultimate blame on the use of inexperienced pilots by the two airlines involved in the crashes. Langewiesche suggested that the accidents resulted from the cost-cutting practices of the airlines and the lax regulatory environments in which they operated. He argued that more experienced pilots, despite their lack of information on MCAS, should have been able to take corrective action to control the planes using customary stall prevention procedures. Langewiesche ( 2019 ) concludes in his article that:

What we had in the two downed airplanes was a textbook failure of airmanship. In broad daylight, these pilots couldn’t decipher a variant of a simple runaway trim, and they ended up flying too fast at low altitude, neglecting to throttle back and leading their passengers over an aerodynamic edge into oblivion. They were the deciding factor here — not the MCAS, not the Max.

Others have taken a more critical view of MCAS, Boeing, and the FAA. These critics prominently include Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who famously crash-landed an A320 in the Hudson River after bird strikes had knocked out both of the plane’s engines. Sullenberger responded directly to Langewiesche in a letter to the Editor:

… Langewiesche draws the conclusion that the pilots are primarily to blame for the fatal crashes of Lion Air 610 and Ethiopian 302. In resurrecting this age-old aviation canard, Langewiesche minimizes the fatal design flaws and certification failures that precipitated those tragedies, and still pose a threat to the flying public. I have long stated, as he does note, that pilots must be capable of absolute mastery of the aircraft and the situation at all times, a concept pilots call airmanship. Inadequate pilot training and insufficient pilot experience are problems worldwide, but they do not excuse the fatally flawed design of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) that was a death trap.... (Sullenberger 2019 )

Noting that he is one of the few pilots to have encountered both accident sequences in a 737 MAX simulator, Sullenberger continued:

These emergencies did not present as a classic runaway stabilizer problem, but initially as ambiguous unreliable airspeed and altitude situations, masking MCAS. The MCAS design should never have been approved, not by Boeing, and not by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)…. (Sullenberger 2019 )

In June 2019, Sullenberger noted in Congressional Testimony that “These crashes are demonstrable evidence that our current system of aircraft design and certification has failed us. These accidents should never have happened” (Benning and DiFurio 2019 ).

Others have agreed with Sullenberger’s assessment. Software developer and pilot Gregory Travis ( 2019 ) argues that Boeing’s design for the 737 MAX violated industry norms and that the company unwisely used software to compensate for inadequacies in the hardware design. Travis also contends that the existence of MCAS was not disclosed to pilots in order to preserve the fiction that the 737 MAX was just an update of earlier 737 models, which served as a way to circumvent the more stringent FAA certification requirements for a new airplane. Reports from government agencies seem to support this assessment, emphasizing the chaotic cockpit conditions created by MCAS and poor certification practices. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) ( 2019 ) Safety Recommendations to the FAA in September 2019 indicated that Boeing underestimated the effect MCAS malfunction would have on the cockpit environment (Kitroeff 2019 , a , b ). The FAA Joint Authorities Technical Review ( 2019 ), which included international participation, issued its Final Report in October 2019. The Report faulted Boeing and FAA in MCAS certification (Koenig 2019 ).

Despite Boeing’s attempts to downplay the role of MCAS, it began to work on a fix for the system shortly after the Lion Air crash (Gates 2019 ). MCAS operation will now be based on inputs from both AOA sensors, instead of just one sensor, with a cockpit indicator light when the sensors disagree. In addition, MCAS will only be activated once for an AOA warning rather than multiple times. What follows is that the system would only seek to prevent a stall once per AOA warning. Also, MCAS’s power will be limited in terms of how much it can move the stabilizer and manual override by the pilot will always be possible (Bellamy 2019 ; Boeing n.d. b; Gates 2019 ). For over a year after the Lion Air crash, Boeing held that pilot simulator training would not be required for the redesigned MCAS system. In January 2020, Boeing relented and recommended that pilot simulator training be required when the 737 MAX returns to service (Pasztor et al. 2020 ).

Boeing and the FAA

There is mounting evidence that Boeing, and the FAA as well, had warnings about the inadequacy of MCAS’s design, and about the lack of communication to pilots about its existence and functioning. In 2015, for example, an unnamed Boeing engineer raised in an email the issue of relying on a single AOA sensor (Bellamy 2019 ). In 2016, Mark Forkner, Boeing’s Chief Technical Pilot, in an email to a colleague flagged the erratic behavior of MCAS in a flight simulator noting: “It’s running rampant” (Gelles and Kitroeff 2019c ). Forkner subsequently came under federal investigation regarding whether he misled the FAA regarding MCAS (Kitroeff and Schmidt 2020 ).

In December 2018, following the Lion Air Crash, the FAA ( 2018b ) conducted a Risk Assessment that estimated that fifteen more 737 MAX crashes would occur in the expected fleet life of 45 years if the flight control issues were not addressed; this Risk Assessment was not publicly disclosed until Congressional hearings a year later in December 2019 (Arnold 2019 ). After the two crashes, a senior Boeing engineer, Curtis Ewbank, filed an internal ethics complaint in 2019 about management squelching of a system that might have uncovered errors in the AOA sensors. Ewbank has since publicly stated that “I was willing to stand up for safety and quality… Boeing management was more concerned with cost and schedule than safety or quality” (Kitroeff et al. 2019b ).

One factor in Boeing’s apparent reluctance to heed such warnings may be attributed to the seeming transformation of the company’s engineering and safety culture over time to a finance orientation beginning with Boeing’s merger with McDonnell–Douglas in 1997 (Tkacik 2019 ; Useem 2019 ). Critical changes after the merger included replacing many in Boeing’s top management, historically engineers, with business executives from McDonnell–Douglas and moving the corporate headquarters to Chicago, while leaving the engineering staff in Seattle (Useem 2019 ). According to Tkacik ( 2019 ), the new management even went so far as “maligning and marginalizing engineers as a class”.

Financial drivers thus began to place an inordinate amount of strain on Boeing employees, including engineers. During the development of the 737 MAX, significant production pressure to keep pace with the Airbus 320neo was ever-present. For example, Boeing management allegedly rejected any design changes that would prolong certification or require additional pilot training for the MAX (Gelles et al. 2019 ). As Adam Dickson, a former Boeing engineer, explained in a television documentary (BBC Panorama 2019 ): “There was a lot of interest and pressure on the certification and analysis engineers in particular, to look at any changes to the Max as minor changes”.

Production pressures were exacerbated by the “cozy relationship” between Boeing and the FAA (Kitroeff et al. 2019a ; see also Gelles and Kaplan 2019 ; Hall and Goelz 2019 ). Beginning in 2005, the FAA increased its reliance on manufacturers to certify their own planes. Self-certification became standard practice throughout the U.S. airline industry. By 2018, Boeing was certifying 96% of its own work (Kitroeff et al. 2019a ).

The serious drawbacks to self-certification became acutely apparent in this case. Of particular concern, the safety analysis for MCAS delegated to Boeing by the FAA was flawed in at least three respects: (1) the analysis underestimated the power of MCAS to move the plane’s horizontal tail and thus how difficult it would be for pilots to maintain control of the aircraft; (2) it did not account for the system deploying multiple times; and (3) it underestimated the risk level if MCAS failed, thus permitting a design feature—the single AOA sensor input to MCAS—that did not have built-in redundancy (Gates 2019 ). Related to these concerns, the ability of MCAS to move the horizontal tail was increased without properly updating the safety analysis or notifying the FAA about the change (Gates 2019 ). In addition, the FAA did not require pilot training for MCAS or simulator training for the 737 MAX (Gelles and Kaplan 2019 ). Since the MAX grounding, the FAA has been become more independent during its assessments and certifications—for example, they will not use Boeing personnel when certifying approvals of new 737 MAX planes (Josephs 2019 ).

The role of the FAA has also been subject to political scrutiny. The report of a study of the FAA certification process commissioned by Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao (DOT 2020 ), released January 16, 2020, concluded that the FAA certification process was “appropriate and effective,” and that certification of the MAX as a new airplane would not have made a difference in the plane’s safety. At the same time, the report recommended a number of measures to strengthen the process and augment FAA’s staff (Pasztor and Cameron 2020 ). In contrast, a report of preliminary investigative findings by the Democratic staff of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure (House TI 2020 ), issued in March 2020, characterized FAA’s certification of the MAX as “grossly insufficient” and criticized Boeing’s design flaws and lack of transparency with the FAA, airlines, and pilots (Duncan and Laris 2020 ).

Boeing has incurred significant economic losses from the crashes and subsequent grounding of the MAX. In December 2019, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg was fired and the corporation announced that 737 MAX production would be suspended in January 2020 (Rich 2019 ) (see Fig.  1 ). Boeing is facing numerous lawsuits and possible criminal investigations. Boeing estimates that its economic losses for the 737 MAX will exceed $18 billion (Gelles 2020 ). In addition to the need to fix MCAS, other issues have arisen in recertification of the aircraft, including wiring for controls of the tail stabilizer, possible weaknesses in the engine rotors, and vulnerabilities in lightning protection for the engines (Kitroeff and Gelles 2020 ). The FAA had planned to flight test the 737 MAX early in 2020, and it was supposed to return to service in summer 2020 (Gelles and Kitroeff 2020 ). Given the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors, it is difficult to predict when MAX flights might resume. In addition, uncertainty of passenger demand has resulted in some airlines delaying or cancelling orders for the MAX (Bogaisky 2020 ). Even after obtaining flight approval, public resistance to flying in the 737 MAX will probably be considerable (Gelles 2019 ).

Lessons for Engineering Ethics

The 737 MAX case is still unfolding and will continue to do so for some time. Yet important lessons can already be learned (or relearned) from the case. Some of those lessons are straightforward, and others are more subtle. A key and clear lesson is that engineers may need reminders about prioritizing the public good, and more specifically, the public’s safety. A more subtle lesson pertains to the ways in which the problem of many hands may or may not apply here. Other lessons involve the need for corporations, engineering societies, and engineering educators to rise to the challenge of nurturing and supporting ethical behavior on the part of engineers, especially in light of the difficulties revealed in this case.

All contemporary codes of ethics promulgated by major engineering societies state that an engineer’s paramount responsibility is to protect the “safety, health, and welfare” of the public. The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Code of Ethics indicates that engineers must “[H]old paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public in the performance of their duties” (AIAA 2013 ). The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Code of Ethics goes further, pledging its members: “…to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public, to strive to comply with ethical design and sustainable development practices, and to disclose promptly factors that might endanger the public or the environment” (IEEE 2017 ). The IEEE Computer Society (CS) cooperated with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in developing a Software Engineering Code of Ethics ( 1997 ) which holds that software engineers shall: “Approve software only if they have a well-founded belief that it is safe, meets specifications, passes appropriate tests, and does not diminish quality of life, diminish privacy or harm the environment….” According to Gotterbarn and Miller ( 2009 ), the latter code is a useful guide when examining cases involving software design and underscores the fact that during design, as in all engineering practice, the well-being of the public should be the overriding concern. While engineering codes of ethics are plentiful in number, they differ in their source of moral authority (i.e., organizational codes vs. professional codes), are often unenforceable through the law, and formally apply to different groups of engineers (e.g., based on discipline or organizational membership). However, the codes are generally recognized as a statement of the values inherent to engineering and its ethical commitments (Davis 2015 ).

An engineer’s ethical responsibility does not preclude consideration of factors such as cost and schedule (Pinkus et al. 1997 ). Engineers always have to grapple with constraints, including time and resource limitations. The engineers working at Boeing did have legitimate concerns about their company losing contracts to its competitor Airbus. But being an engineer means that public safety and welfare must be the highest priority (Davis 1991 ). The aforementioned software and other design errors in the development of the 737 MAX, which resulted in hundreds of deaths, would thus seem to be clear violations of engineering codes of ethics. In addition to pointing to engineering codes, Peterson ( 2019 ) argues that Boeing engineers and managers violated widely accepted ethical norms such as informed consent and the precautionary principle.

From an engineering perspective, the central ethical issue in the MAX case arguably circulates around the decision to use software (i.e., MCAS) to “mask” a questionable hardware design—the repositioning of the engines that disrupted the aerodynamics of the airframe (Travis 2019 ). As Johnston and Harris ( 2019 ) argue: “To meet the design goals and avoid an expensive hardware change, Boeing created the MCAS as a software Band-Aid.” Though a reliance on software fixes often happens in this manner, it places a high burden of safety on such fixes that they may not be able to handle, as is illustrated by the case of the Therac-25 radiation therapy machine. In the Therac-25 case, hardware safety interlocks employed in earlier models of the machine were replaced by software safety controls. In addition, information about how the software might malfunction was lacking from the user manual for the Therac machine. Thus, when certain types of errors appeared on its interface, the machine’s operators did not know how to respond. Software flaws, among other factors, contributed to six patients being given massive radiation overdoses, resulting in deaths and serious injuries (Leveson and Turner 1993 ). A more recent case involves problems with the embedded software guiding the electronic throttle in Toyota vehicles. In 2013, “…a jury found Toyota responsible for two unintended acceleration deaths, with expert witnesses citing bugs in the software and throttle fail safe defects” (Cummings and Britton 2020 ).

Boeing’s use of MCAS to mask the significant change in hardware configuration of the MAX was compounded by not providing redundancy for components prone to failure (i.e., the AOA sensors) (Campbell 2019 ), and by failing to notify pilots about the new software. In such cases, it is especially crucial that pilots receive clear documentation and relevant training so that they know how to manage the hand-off with an automated system properly (Johnston and Harris 2019 ). Part of the necessity for such training is related to trust calibration (Borenstein et al. 2020 ; Borenstein et al. 2018 ), a factor that has contributed to previous airplane accidents (e.g., Carr 2014 ). For example, if pilots do not place enough trust in an automated system, they may add risk by intervening in system operation. Conversely, if pilots trust an automated system too much, they may lack sufficient time to act once they identify a problem. This is further complicated in the MAX case because pilots were not fully aware, if at all, of MCAS’s existence and how the system functioned.

In addition to engineering decision-making that failed to prioritize public safety, questionable management decisions were also made at both Boeing and the FAA. As noted earlier, Boeing managerial leadership ignored numerous warning signs that the 737 MAX was not safe. Also, FAA’s shift to greater reliance on self-regulation by Boeing was ill-advised; that lesson appears to have been learned at the expense of hundreds of lives (Duncan and Aratani 2019 ).

The Problem of Many Hands Revisited

Actions, or inaction, by large, complex organizations, in this case corporate and government entities, suggest that the “problem of many hands” may be relevant to the 737 MAX case. At a high level of abstraction, the problem of many hands involves the idea that accountability is difficult to assign in the face of collective action, especially in a computerized society (Thompson 1980 ; Nissenbaum 1994 ). According to Nissenbaum ( 1996 , 29), “Where a mishap is the work of ‘many hands,’ it may not be obvious who is to blame because frequently its most salient and immediate causal antecedents do not converge with its locus of decision-making. The conditions for blame, therefore, are not satisfied in a way normally satisfied when a single individual is held blameworthy for a harm”.

However, there is an alternative understanding of the problem of many hands. In this version of the problem, the lack of accountability is not merely because multiple people and multiple decisions figure into a final outcome. Instead, in order to “qualify” as the problem of many hands, the component decisions should be benign, or at least far less harmful, if examined in isolation; only when the individual decisions are collectively combined do we see the most harmful result. In this understanding, the individual decision-makers should not have the same moral culpability as they would if they made all the decisions by themselves (Noorman 2020 ).

Both of these understandings of the problem of many hands could shed light on the 737 MAX case. Yet we focus on the first version of the problem. We admit the possibility that some of the isolated decisions about the 737 MAX may have been made in part because of ignorance of a broader picture. While we do not stake a claim on whether this is what actually happened in the MAX case, we acknowledge that it may be true in some circumstances. However, we think the more important point is that some of the 737 MAX decisions were so clearly misguided that a competent engineer should have seen the implications, even if the engineer was not aware of all of the broader context. The problem then is to identify responsibility for the questionable decisions in a way that discourages bad judgments in the future, a task made more challenging by the complexities of the decision-making. Legal proceedings about this case are likely to explore those complexities in detail and are outside the scope of this article. But such complexities must be examined carefully so as not to act as an insulator to accountability.

When many individuals are involved in the design of a computing device, for example, and a serious failure occurs, each person might try to absolve themselves of responsibility by indicating that “too many people” and “too many decisions” were involved for any individual person to know that the problem was going to happen. This is a common, and often dubious, excuse in the attempt to abdicate responsibility for a harm. While it can have different levels of magnitude and severity, the problem of many hands often arises in large scale ethical failures in engineering such as in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (Thompson 2014 ).

Possible examples in the 737 MAX case of the difficulty of assigning moral responsibility due to the problem of many hands include:

• The decision to reposition the engines;
• The decision to mask the jet’s subsequent dynamic instability with MCAS;
• The decision to rely on only one AOA sensor in designing MCAS; and
• The decision to not inform nor properly train pilots about the MCAS system.

While overall responsibility for each of these decisions may be difficult to allocate precisely, at least points 1–3 above arguably reflect fundamental errors in engineering judgement (Travis 2019 ). Boeing engineers and FAA engineers either participated in or were aware of these decisions (Kitroeff and Gelles 2019 ) and may have had opportunities to reconsider or redirect such decisions. As Davis has noted ( 2012 ), responsible engineering professionals make it their business to address problems even when they did not cause the problem, or, we would argue, solely cause it. As noted earlier, reports indicate that at least one Boeing engineer expressed reservations about the design of MCAS (Bellamy 2019 ). Since the two crashes, one Boeing engineer, Curtis Ewbank, filed an internal ethics complaint (Kitroeff et al. 2019b ) and several current and former Boeing engineers and other employees have gone public with various concerns about the 737 MAX (Pasztor 2019 ). And yet, as is often the case, the flawed design went forward with tragic results.

Enabling Ethical Engineers

The MAX case is eerily reminiscent of other well-known engineering ethics case studies such as the Ford Pinto (Birsch and Fielder 1994 ), Space Shuttle Challenger (Werhane 1991 ), and GM ignition switch (Jennings and Trautman 2016 ). In the Pinto case, Ford engineers were aware of the unsafe placement of the fuel tank well before the car was released to the public and signed off on the design even though crash tests showed the tank was vulnerable to rupture during low-speed rear-end collisions (Baura 2006 ). In the case of the GM ignition switch, engineers knew for at least four years about the faulty design, a flaw that resulted in at least a dozen fatal accidents (Stephan 2016 ). In the case of the well-documented Challenger accident, engineer Roger Boisjoly warned his supervisors at Morton Thiokol of potentially catastrophic flaws in the shuttle’s solid rocket boosters a full six months before the accident. He, along with other engineers, unsuccessfully argued on the eve of launch for a delay due to the effect that freezing temperatures could have on the boosters’ O-ring seals. Boisjoly was also one of a handful of engineers to describe these warnings to the Presidential commission investigating the accident (Boisjoly et al. 1989 ).

Returning to the 737 MAX case, could Ewbank or others with concerns about the safety of the airplane have done more than filing ethics complaints or offering public testimony only after the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes? One might argue that requiring professional registration by all engineers in the U.S. would result in more ethical conduct (for example, by giving state licensing boards greater oversight authority). Yet the well-entrenched “industry exemption” from registration for most engineers working in large corporations has undermined such calls (Kline 2001 ).

It could empower engineers with safety concerns if Boeing and other corporations would strengthen internal ethics processes, including sincere and meaningful responsiveness to anonymous complaint channels. Schwartz ( 2013 ) outlines three core components of an ethical corporate culture, including strong core ethical values, a formal ethics program (including an ethics hotline), and capable ethical leadership. Schwartz points to Siemens’ creation of an ethics and compliance department following a bribery scandal as an example of a good solution. Boeing has had a compliance department for quite some time (Schnebel and Bienert 2004 ) and has taken efforts in the past to evaluate its effectiveness (Boeing 2003 ). Yet it is clear that more robust measures are needed in response to ethics concerns and complaints. Since the MAX crashes, Boeing’s Board has implemented a number of changes including establishing a corporate safety group and revising internal reporting procedures so that lead engineers primarily report to the chief engineer rather than business managers (Gelles and Kitroeff 2019b , Boeing n.d. c). Whether these measures will be enough to restore Boeing’s former engineering-centered focus remains to be seen.

Professional engineering societies could play a stronger role in communicating and enforcing codes of ethics, in supporting ethical behavior of engineers, and by providing more educational opportunities for learning about ethics and about the ethical responsibilities of engineers. Some societies, including ACM and IEEE, have become increasingly engaged in ethics-related activities. Initially ethics engagement by the societies consisted primarily of a focus on macroethical issues such as sustainable development (Herkert 2004 ). Recently, however, the societies have also turned to a greater focus on microethical issues (the behavior of individuals). The 2017 revision to the IEEE Code of Ethics, for example, highlights the importance of “ethical design” (Adamson and Herkert 2020 ). This parallels IEEE activities in the area of design of autonomous and intelligent systems (e.g., IEEE 2018 ). A promising outcome of this emphasis is a move toward implementing “ethical design” frameworks (Peters et al. 2020 ).

In terms of engineering education, educators need to place a greater emphasis on fostering moral courage, that is the courage to act on one’s moral convictions including adherence to codes of ethics. This is of particular significance in large organizations such as Boeing and the FAA where the agency of engineers may be limited by factors such as organizational culture (Watts and Buckley 2017 ). In a study of twenty-six ethics interventions in engineering programs, Hess and Fore ( 2018 ) found that only twenty-seven percent had a learning goal of development of “ethical courage, confidence or commitment”. This goal could be operationalized in a number of ways, for example through a focus on virtue ethics (Harris 2008 ) or professional identity (Hashemian and Loui 2010 ). This need should not only be addressed within the engineering curriculum but during lifelong learning initiatives and other professional development opportunities as well (Miller 2019 ).

The circumstances surrounding the 737 MAX airplane could certainly serve as an informative case study for ethics or technical courses. The case can shed light on important lessons for engineers including the complex interactions, and sometimes tensions, between engineering and managerial considerations. The case also tangibly displays that what seems to be relatively small-scale, and likely well-intended, decisions by individual engineers can combine collectively to result in large-scale tragedy. No individual person wanted to do harm, but it happened nonetheless. Thus, the case can serve a reminder to current and future generations of engineers that public safety must be the first and foremost priority. A particularly useful pedagogical method for considering this case is to assign students to the roles of engineers, managers, and regulators, as well as the flying public, airline personnel, and representatives of engineering societies (Herkert 1997 ). In addition to illuminating the perspectives and responsibilities of each stakeholder group, role-playing can also shed light on the “macroethical” issues raised by the case (Martin et al. 2019 ) such as airline safety standards and the proper role for engineers and engineering societies in the regulation of the industry.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The case of the Boeing 737 MAX provides valuable lessons for engineers and engineering educators concerning the ethical responsibilities of the profession. Safety is not cheap, but careless engineering design in the name of minimizing costs and adhering to a delivery schedule is a symptom of ethical blight. Using almost any standard ethical analysis or framework, Boeing’s actions regarding the safety of the 737 MAX, particularly decisions regarding MCAS, fall short.

Boeing failed in its obligations to protect the public. At a minimum, the company had an obligation to inform airlines and pilots of significant design changes, especially the role of MCAS in compensating for repositioning of engines in the MAX from prior versions of the 737. Clearly, it was a “significant” change because it had a direct, and unfortunately tragic, impact on the public’s safety. The Boeing and FAA interaction underscores the fact that conflicts of interest are a serious concern in regulatory actions within the airline industry.

Internal and external organizational factors may have interfered with Boeing and FAA engineers’ fulfillment of their professional ethical responsibilities; this is an all too common problem that merits serious attention from industry leaders, regulators, professional societies, and educators. The lessons to be learned in this case are not new. After large scale tragedies involving engineering decision-making, calls for change often emerge. But such lessons apparently must be retaught and relearned by each generation of engineers.

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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• News Releases/Statements

MOSCOW, Oct. 27, 2021 — Boeing [NYSE: BA] today said that airlines in Russia, Ukraine and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) will require 1,540 new airplanes valued at $200 billion over the next 20 years, driven mainly by growth in the single-aisle market. The region also will need aftermarket aviation services such as passenger-to-freighter conversions, maintenance and repair, and digital services worth $320 billion, according to the 2021 Commercial Market Outlook (CMO), Boeing’s long-term forecast of demand for commercial airplanes and services.

Global and regional air travel markets are recovering largely as Boeing projected last year.  Following a strong economic rebound and large pent-up demand, Russia has led all regions in domestic air traffic recovery, with growth expected to continue, according to Boeing.

“Boeing is ready to support carriers in Russia, Ukraine and CIS as they transform their business models and take advantage of opportunities for further growth,” said Randy Heisey, Boeing managing director of Commercial Marketing for Russia, Ukraine and CIS. “Aviation is vitally important for enabling robust domestic tourism growth and a rebound in long-haul leisure travel while also supporting trade and cargo links across a huge geographic region.”

The 2021 CMO for Russia, Ukraine and CIS includes these projections through 2040:

• Air traffic is projected to grow by 2.9% annually, tied to economic growth of 2.1% per year.
• More than half of deliveries to the region will be for growth. The overall fleet is expected to total more than 2,000 airplanes, with demand for more fuel-efficient models.
• Single-aisle airplanes will represent 75% of deliveries, with demand for 1,150 airplanes. Demand will be driven by growth in the low-cost carrier (LCC) segment, including opportunities for new and expanding low-cost airlines.
• Demand for 160 new widebody passenger and freighter airplanes to serve regional leisure markets as well as long-haul passenger and cargo markets.
• The region will require 83,000 new aviation personnel, including 25,000 pilots, 25,000 technicians and 33,000 cabin crews. For Boeing’s global demand forecast, go to the Pilot and Technician Outlook website .

For Boeing’s global and regional forecasts, including data and analysis, go to the Commercial Market Outlook website .

As a leading global aerospace company, Boeing develops, manufactures and services commercial airplanes, defense products and space systems for customers in more than 150 countries. Boeing and Russia have long-term partnerships in multiple areas, including aviation, metallurgy, space, engineering and information technologies. The company is committed to long-term relationships with operators in the region to provide fleet solutions and services. In addition, Boeing collaborates with leading Russian aerospace companies on the International Space Station program. Boeing’s footprint in Russia, Ukraine and CIS includes the Boeing Design Center employing more than 2,000 highly qualified engineers in Moscow and Kyiv, Ukraine, who support all major Boeing Commercial Airplanes and Boeing Global Services programs. The company also runs its Flight Training Campus and Research & Technology center in Moscow and a joint venture Ural Boeing Manufacturing with the titanium supplier VSMPO-AVISMA. Learn more at www.boeing.ru .

Contacts: Elena Alexandrova Boeing Communications +7 985 774 63 28 [email protected]

Evgeniia Teterina Boeing Communications +7 967 033 53 50 [email protected]

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Speaker 1: Today we will discuss what is perhaps the most single important element of your research paper, the title. The title is the first thing that journal editors and reviewers see when they look at your paper. It is also the only piece of information that fellow researchers will see in a database or search engine query. Therefore, you want to make sure the title captures all of the relevant aspects of your study but does so in a way that is accessible and captivating to readers. Follow these steps to create a perfect title for your paper. First, ask yourself some questions about what your paper seeks to answer and what it accomplishes. What is my paper about? My paper studies how program volume affects outcomes for liver transplant patients on waiting lists. What methods or techniques did I use to perform my study? I employed a case study. What or who was the subject of my study? I studied 60 liver transplant patients on a waiting list in the U.S. aged 20 to 50 years. What were the results? Positive correlation between waiting list volume and poor outcome of transplant procedure. After answering these questions, move on to the second step, which is to identify and list key words and phrases from these responses. Program volume, outcomes, liver transplant patients, waiting lists, case study, 60 liver transplant patients, age 20 to 50 years, positive correlation. These keywords will form the foundation of your title. Once you have identified and listed these keywords, use them to create one long sentence. This study used a case study of 60 liver transplant patients around the U.S. aged 20 to 50 years to assess how the waiting list volume affects the outcome of liver transplantation in patients. These indicate a positive correlation between increased waiting list volume and a negative prognosis after transplant procedure. Next create a working title. Remove elements that make it a complete sentence, but keep everything that is most important to what the study is about. Delete all unnecessary or redundant words. Now let's shift some words around and rephrase it a bit to shorten the length and make it leaner and yet more natural. What you are left with is a case study of 60 liver transplant patients around the U.S. aged 20 to 50 years assessing the impact of waiting list volume on outcome of a transplantation and showing a positive correlation between increased waiting list volume and negative prognosis. This is getting closer to what we want in a title, which is just the most important information. But note that the word count for this working title is still 38 words, whereas the average published journal article title is 16 words or fewer. Therefore we need to eliminate some words and phrases that are not essential to the title. In step 5 you will delete all extra words and phrases and put key words at the beginning and end of your title. Since the number of patients studied and the exact outcome are not the most essential elements of this paper, remove these elements first. In addition, the methods used in a study are not usually the most searched for keywords in databases and represent additional details that you may want to remove to make your title a little leaner. So we are left with assessing the impact of waiting list volume on outcome and prognosis in liver transplantation patients. In this final version you can immediately see how much clearer the title is and what the study is about and what it aims to achieve. And note that the important terms are written at the beginning and the end of the title. Assessing, which is the main action of the study, is at the beginning and liver transplantation patients, the specific subject of the study, is given at the end. This will help a lot with search engine and database queries, meaning that a lot more researchers will find your article once it is published. And if you want to add a subtitle to give more detail about methodology, you can do this by putting this information after a colon. A case study of US adult patients ages 20 to 25. We abide strictly by our word count rule, this may be unnecessary, but every journal has its own standard formatting and style guidelines for titles, so it's a good idea to be aware of these both while writing your title and writing the study itself. So let's review these steps. First, answer some basic questions about your paper. Next, identify and list keywords and phrases from these responses. Third, turn these keywords into a long sentence. Out of this long sentence you can create a working title, deleting any unnecessary and redundant words. Last, delete any extra elements to meet a suitable word count for your title. Note key terms at the beginning and the end, and again you may add a subtitle if it seems necessary or important to this study. Keep these tips in mind when creating your research paper title. Write the title after you've written your paper in abstract. Include all of your paper's essential terms. Keep it short and to the point, about 16 words or fewer is best. Avoid using jargon or abbreviations that will not be understandable by the general reader. Use keywords that closely relate to the content of your paper, and never use a period at the end of your title. Remember, your title is not a sentence. For more tips on how to improve your writing, visit wordvice.com and check out our resources page where you will find a great many helpful articles and videos. And be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel and social media pages to stay up to date with more excellent academic writing and journal publications content.

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Boeing and Ford suspend operations in Russia.

The U.S. manufacturing companies are the latest to shut down offices and factories since Russia invaded Ukraine.

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By Niraj Chokshi and Neal E. Boudette

• March 1, 2022

Two major U.S. manufacturers, Boeing and Ford Motor, have suspended their business activities in Russia as the country escalated its war in Ukraine.

Boeing said on Tuesday that it had halted major operations in its Moscow office and temporarily closed another office in Kyiv, Ukraine. The company also said it had ceased providing parts, maintenance and technical support services to Russian airlines. In recent days, countries around the world have imposed sanctions on Russian carriers, limiting their ability to use leased planes; fly over Western Europe; or buy spare parts.

Boeing employs several thousand people in Russia, Ukraine and a handful of former Soviet states, an operation that includes a major design center in Moscow. The company also runs a flight training campus and research and technology center in the city and has a joint venture in Russia with VSMPO-AVISMA, Boeing’s largest titanium supplier.

Boeing has been trying to diversify its titanium supply in recent years, and it said it had enough of the metal on hand to keep making commercial aircraft in the near term.

Ford, which once had three plants in Russia, is suspending its remaining operations in the country indefinitely because of the invasion. The automaker is part of a joint venture that makes small delivery vans at a plant in Yelabuga, more than 600 miles east of Moscow. It also works with a distributor that sells imported Ford vehicles.

“Ford is deeply concerned about the invasion of Ukraine and the resultant threats to peace and stability,” the company said in a statement. “The situation has compelled us to reassess our operations in Russia.”

Ford shut down its three plants in Russia in 2019 as part of an effort to turn around its struggling European operation.

Niraj Chokshi covers the business of transportation, with a focus on autonomous vehicles, airlines and logistics. More about Niraj Chokshi

Neal E. Boudette is based in Michigan and has been covering the auto industry for two decades. He joined The New York Times in 2016 after more than 15 years at The Wall Street Journal. More about Neal E. Boudette

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Breaking barriers: Nestlé replaces more packaging with paper innovations

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As part of Nestlé’s continuous efforts towards more sustainable packaging solutions, the company is launching paper-based innovations across major brands.

Recently Nestlé introduced paperboard canisters for its Vital Proteins brand in the United States . This packaging material and design change results in a 90% plastic reduction from previous packaging. Developed by experts at the R&D center for Nestlé Health Science in Bridgewater, New Jersey, in collaboration with external partners, the new canister has a proprietary coverlid that is rigid and tight. It allows for easy opening and closing of the canisters, while being leak and spill-proof, as well as durable for everyday usage.

Additionally, Nestlé’s global R&D network is working alongside external partners and suppliers to develop the next generation of high barrier paper packaging solutions across product categories.

Gerhard Niederreiter, Head of Nestlé’s Institute of Packaging Sciences, explains: "When developing paper packaging, we consider each product’s sensitivity to external elements such as oxygen, temperature and moisture. Starting with less sensitive products, Nestlé’s paper packaging journey started in confectionery including Smarties and KitKat and is now advancing to product categories such as coffee which require higher barrier protection."

In the United Kingdom, Nestlé recently introduced a high-barrier paper refill pack for Nescafé . This refill paper packaging solution allows consumers to replenish their glass Nescafé jars at home without having to compromise on product freshness or quality. This reduces packaging weight by 97 percent and the paper packaging can be recycled in the local paper waste stream.

In addition, the Nescafé Cappuccino range in Europe now has new packaging featuring a paper-body instead of the previous plastic can. It is fully recyclable in the paper waste stream across Europe, where this packaging format is available in different product varieties.

Axel Touzet, Head of the Coffee Business Unit for Nestlé, says: "Coffee is particularly sensitive to oxygen and humidity. This is why redesigning packaging for this product category requires additional efforts to ensure we can safeguard product freshness and quality with science-based and sustainable solutions."

These cross-category packaging innovations build on Nestlé's unique expertise and company-wide efforts to reach its 2025 packaging sustainability aim of designing 95% of its plastic packaging for recycling and reducing the use of virgin plastic by one third.

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