The American planemaker, has quietly recalled at least 900 quality control inspectors who were laid off in 2019 as part of a drive to adopt car-industry manufacturing processes in aerospace manufacturing.
Boeing made the move after the union for the inspectors ‘Machinists District Lodge 751’ pushed the company to prove that getting rid of inspectors could be done without risking quality issues and would actually improve production times.
“Our union’s goal is to save Boeing from making decisions that could be detrimental to (its) future and ours,” union leaders said in its monthly AeroMechanic newsletter. “A second set of eyes is a critical component of building Boeing airplanes and necessary for the long-term success of the company.”
A union spokeswoman said she was unable to say precisely how many of the inspectors were initially laid off, and how many have been brought back since the recalls started. Boeing’s media relations team did not respond to a written list of questions on the topic.
In 2019, Boeing announced a plan to use “smart tools” using Bluetooth technology connecting to a database that would allow work to be done so precisely that quality control inspections by humans would no longer be necessary. Instead of doing quality checks 100% of the time, inspectors would sample 1-in-100 tasks, or maybe less.
This process – Boeing dubbed it “Verification Optimization” is adapted from a process that Toyota uses on its auto assembly lines.
For Boeing, the plan would have had two business benefits: eliminating 900 people from the payroll, and also eliminating a few minutes of downtime for mechanics while they wait for an inspector to come around to inspect and sign off on their work.
In theory, if you eliminate the downtime and the inspections a few thousand times on each plane, that adds up to substantial savings in production time without any investment in people or tools.
IAM 751 appealed to the Federal Aviation Administration to look into Boeing’s plan and made rumblings about getting its supporters in Congress to intervene. Congress is now preparing an investigation into quality lapses at Boeing.
But the deciding factor, in this case, seems to have been the union’s demand to enter into what’s called effects bargaining. Since Boeing was eliminating 900 jobs, the union claimed the right to negotiate over the impact of those changes on its members.
As a result of these talks, Boeing and the union agreed that a team of union-appointed experts would begin reviewing data in areas where inspections were ending, with the ability to propose reinstating inspections when warranted, using Boeing’s own risk assessment criteria and FAA regulations as guidelines.
No Efficiency Gains
What the experts found was that eliminating inspections did not lead to a more efficient production process, the union said.
“In many instances, mechanics were not even made aware that inspections were removed, nor were they given any training on how this would impact their roles and responsibilities in their work assignment,” the union said. “It was a short-sighted decision without considering the long-term consequences.”
Last fall, the union said, Boeing agreed to resume having human inspectors reinstated to inspect thousands of holes that must be drilled within close tolerances (often with only a few thousands of an inch margin for error).
More inspections were reinstated in April, and Boeing recalled inspectors to do that work, the union said. The union said it will “continue to push Boeing to recall and hire additional inspectors” because “inspection remains an important and positive role in the production process.”
Source:leehamnews.com