WSJ: Boeing's Fuselage Factory 'Plagued' by Production Problems and Quality Lapses

'Long before the harrowing Alaska Airlines blowout on January 5, there were concerns within Boeing about the way the aerospace giant was building its planes,' reports the Wall Street Journal.

There's been issues with various models — like 'misdrilled holes, loose rudder bolts, and this month's MAX 9 door-plug blowout' — but many can be traced back to the outsourcing Boeing and other aerospace companies adopted more than 20 years ago where key pieces are built elsewhere and then assembled at Boeing. And the Journal reports that the door-plug was built at a factory that Boeing owned until 2005, now run by Spirit AeroSystems, that 'has been plagued by production problems and quality lapses since Boeing ceded so much responsibility for its work... '

Spirit is the sole supplier of the fuselages used in many Boeing jets, including the Alaska plane that made the emergency landing. It is heavily dependent on Boeing for revenue, and the two companies have battled for years over costs and quality issues. The earlier MAX grounding and Covid-19 pandemic sapped Spirit's finances, and the company slashed thousands of jobs, leaving it short-handed when demand bounced back. Some Spirit employees said production problems were common and internal complaints about quality were ignored. In a given month, at a production rate of two fuselages a day, there are 10 million holes that need to be filled with some combination of bolts, fasteners and rivets. 'We have planes all over the world that have issues that nobody has found because of the pressure Spirit has put on employees to get the job done so fast,' said Cornell Beard, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers chapter representing workers at Spirit's Wichita factory... Alaska Airlines and United Airlines say they have found loose hardware on other MAX 9 jets they have checked, suggesting that problems go beyond one plane...

The company, which had 15,900 workers in four U.S. factories at the end of 2019, laid off thousands of people in Wichita at the height of the pandemic. When it needed to ramp back up, not only did Spirit have fewer people on site, the company had lost years of expertise. There were fewer experienced mechanics, but also fewer experts who could inspect the quality of their work. [Spirit CEO Pat Shanahan ] said the quick production ramp-up and the earlier MAX grounding left the company short of experienced workers. 'When you have disruption, you have instability,' he said...

For more than a decade, Spirit and Boeing battled over costs, quality and the pace of production. Boeing's demands for lower prices left Spirit strapped for cash as managers panicked over meeting increasingly demanding deadlines. Boeing routinely had employees on the ground in Wichita and conducted audits of the supplier. The result, some current and former employees say: a factory where workers rush to meet unrealistic quotas and where pointing out problems is discouraged if not punished. Increasingly, they say, planes have been leaving Wichita with so-called escapements, or undetected defects. 'It is known at Spirit that if you make too much noise and cause too much trouble, you will be moved,' said Joshua Dean, a former Spirit quality auditor who says he was fired after flagging misdrilled holes in fuselages. 'It doesn't mean you completely disregard stuff, but they don't want you to find everything and write it up.' His account is included in a shareholder lawsuit filed in December against Spirit that alleges the company failed to disclose costly defects.

A Spirit spokesman said the company strongly disagrees with the assertions and intends to defend against the suit...
After being laid off during the pandemic shutdown, Dean returned to Spirit in May 2021. By then, he said, the company had lost many of its most experienced mechanics and auditors. Spirit already was under more intense scrutiny from Boeing. The jet maker placed Spirit on a so-called probation, in which the company more closely scrutinized the supplier's work. To get off probation, Spirit needed to reduce the number of defects on the line. At one point, Dean said, the company threw a pizza party for employees to celebrate a drop in the number of defects reported. Chatter at the party turned to how everyone knew that the defect numbers were down only because people were reporting fewer problems.
On the Spirit factory floor, some machinists building planes say their concerns about quality rarely get conveyed to more senior managers, and that quality inspectors fear retaliation if they point out too many problems. Union representatives complained to leaders last fall that the company removed inspectors from line jobs and replaced them with contract workers after they flagged multiple defects.
Two key quotes from the article:

'As some problems on both the 787 and 737 were traced back to Spirit, Boeing executives said in 2023 that the plane maker would be ratcheting up oversight of the supplier it once owned.'
New FAA chief Mike Whitaker said 'Whatever's happened over the previous years — because this has been going on for years — has not worked.' When it comes to what caused last week's in-flight incident, 'All indications are it's manufacturing.'

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