Boeing factory workers have expressed concerns about pressures on production speed as the planemaker’s processes are scrutinized in the wake of January’s Alaska Airlines blowout.
At the firm’s plants, the work is divided into different stations called “flow days” — but employees say aircraft can move down the line with incomplete work in order to maintain speed.
A technician at the planemaker’s 737 Max factory in Renton, Washington, told The Seattle Times there is “pressure just to make miracles happen.”
Speaking to National Transportation Safety Board investigators in April, another Renton factory employee, who works on seat installation, said there were problems with time management.
“You just got to work around it,” he said. “So if like, another crew is behind, we’ll just work on the next plane we need to work on.”
Asked what could make the process perfect, he said: “Probably making sure when it gets to our flow day, everything will be ready, like, complete.”
He added that 60% to 70% of the aircraft that come through to his station are still waiting for other work to be done.
“They travel defects constantly. The line has to keep going,” a line worker at Boeing’s factory in Everett, Washington, told The Seattle Times.
Another staffer at the Everett factory, which builds the 777 and 767, told the newspaper that this spring, a plane arrived at their workstation “nowhere near ready” for the team.
They added that the firm decided, “We’re behind on deliveries, we’ve got to get deliveries out, we’re going to take this plane because it’s close enough.”
According to the NTSB’s preliminary report, the Alaska Airlines 737 Max that lost a door plug left Boeing’s factory missing key bolts.
In March, the then-Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said production needed to “slow down” to ensure quality.
737 Max production has been limited since the blowout, but some Boeing employees say they still face pressure.
The Seattle Times reported that at a recent union rally, Patric Boone, a machinist at the Everett plant, said employees are “overmanaged and undersupported.”
“The house is on fire, and they’re concentrated on turning the lights off,” he added. “They’re not seeing the problem.”
In March, a team captain at the Renton factory told NTSB investigators: “Sometimes morale, right, can be low. We have a lot of turnover specifically because, you know, this can be a stressful job.”
Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, sent outside regular working hours on the Labor Day holiday.
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