Aerospace is having its ‘Sarbanes Oxley Moment’

Sharon Terlep’s March 11 article, "Behind the Alaska Blowout: a Manufacturing Habit Boeing Can't Break," exposes a major blind spot in aerospace manufacturing that affects the shop floor.

The factory is where safety audits start but also where controls fall apart. Terlep’s article calls out “traveled work,” a practice that refers to out-of-sequence work on the production line. While this may seem like a nuance to industry outsiders, insiders know that uncontrolled traveled work threatens product quality at the factory level which leads to bigger issues related to lack of process and work on the shop floor that goes unchecked.

Often, when work is pushed-out to the next station, many of the protocols that ensure the right work is done in the right sequence with the right verifications get sacrificed.? Traveled work should not entail accepting any lesser controls for quality of work. With inadequate procedures and systems, it often does.

In spite of pledges to do better, Boeing and other industry titans have failed to correct this systemic manufacturing problem and take steps to modernize their systems to close blind spots. There are half a dozen core tenets that must be built into ANY work control systems.? Boeing has allowed for work execution processes that bypass these core tenets.

There are alarming industry parallels between the current manufacturing challenges in aerospace and the lack of adequate financial controls that fueled the Enron and WorldCom accounting scandals decades ago. In that era, Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) to tighten financial controls. But unlike the financial meltdown of Enron and WorldCom, the consequences from aircraft shortcomings today directly impact passenger safety – and the issue needs to be corrected immediately and change needs to come from the industry itself.

While Boeing CEO, Dave Calhoun, recently stepped down, the issue extends far beyond C-suite atonement. Industry change needs to happen; big players need to update their systems and enter the modern production era and focus on base tenets of production and assembly protocols.

Millions are spent on sophisticated CAD systems that accelerate innovation at the design engineering level. But the manufacturing systems that bring these designs to life with ‘hands on’ production tend to be the forgotten stepchild. The factory floor is a last-mile blind spot where significant vulnerability carries through to end-user scenarios that keep bubbling up, plaguing the industry, and threatening safety. This is where manufacturers need more controls. Case in point, it’s common practice for ERP data to be entered by hand to run financial and inventory systems. That’s a lot of room for error especially when digital solutions are readily available.

In addition, the industry is also faced with numerous labor issues due to retiring professionals and the painful process of onboarding new workers into an antiquated system. Archaic manual processes are still at work and production is guided by the tribal knowledge of shop floor workers and production chiefs who have been installed for decades. Alarmingly, production happens despite itself-- with limited centralized processes and tracking, and no ability to quickly react to change.? A lack of institutionalized processes and centralized knowledge puts the onus on aircraft manufacturers to modernize process and workflows through digitalization.?

Without major changes and a commitment to do better, improvised shortcutting will persist. From assembly lines to parts flying off mid-flight, the recent safety lapses have proved that efforts to date are insufficient to uphold crucial quality controls.

Systems that enforce core aerospace tenets ensure that every step of the way, whether as planned or modified on the fly, every installation and removal is accounted for, and the delivered unit conforms to the spec’ed configuration.? Removed parts cause “Holes” that are highlighted and must be made correct.? Inadequate tooling or skills are also verified.

In order to change, manufacturers need to adapt their systems and create standards for digital transformation that ensure all production on the factory floor stands up to test and measurement before it goes out the door. Manufacturers need to take a cold, hard look at where manual processes give way to vulnerability. Similar to the ZeroTrust mandates occurring for federal government contractors, similar standards need to be enabled on the part of aerospace manufacturers.

We need a collective commitment to implement better checks and balances on the shop floor to ensure the safety of the flying public.