Boeing rethinks how it trains new employees at 737 MAX plant: NPR

RENTON, Wash. — Boeing is assembling the 737 at a massive factory here that can hold more than a dozen unfinished planes, their bright green fuselages lined up from nose to tail.

But before new Boeing employees start working on these planes, they spend a few months at the nearby Boeing training center, learning the basics.

“Everything has a name, everything has a measurement, everything has a place. It’s just amazing detail,” said Derek Farmer, who spent about two months interning at Boeing.

Farmer worked as an aviation mechanic in the Army and helped keep Boeing helicopters in the air for nine years. Now that he’s learned how to build planes, Farmer says the level of detail requires a lot of attention, even for him.

“Every bolt, every washer, every rivet,” he said. “Everything is important.”

Boeing has gone on a hiring spree, adding thousands of new workers to replace experienced employees who have left in droves during the coronavirus pandemic.

“Every bolt, every washer, every rivet. Everything is important,” said Derek Farmer, right, as he trained on electrical systems with Timothy Weil at Boeing’s Foundation Training Center on Tuesday.

Jennifer Buchanan/Pool photo from The Seattle Times

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Jennifer Buchanan/Pool photo by The Seattle Times

Boeing is now changing the way it trains new employees at the plant where it assembles the 737 MAX, part of a broader effort to improve quality control after a door seal plate caused a relatively new plane to explode in midair. The company this week gave reporters a rare glimpse inside its 737 factory near Seattle, the same factory where a Boeing worker or workers failed to reinstall four key bolts that were supposed to hold the door seal in place.

“I am very confident that the measures we have taken have ensured the safety of every aircraft that leaves this factory,” said Elizabeth Lund, senior vice president of Quality at Boeing. “I feel very confident that it won’t happen again.”

Lund says Boeing has made a lot of changes since the door seal incident. The company has added new steps to ensure that work is carried out in the correct sequence and properly documented.

Lund says Boeing is rethinking how the company trains new employees.

“It worked before when we didn’t have a lot of new people coming in,” she told reporters this week. But with so many new people joining, Lund says they don’t get as much on-the-job training from experienced employees.

“Having that person with them, helping them do their work. That relationship wasn’t as strong as it used to be,” she said.

Lund said Boeing responded by creating a formal training program and adding several additional weeks of basic training, from a maximum of 12 weeks before to 14 weeks now. The company is reviewing its training materials to make them more practical.

Elizabeth Lund, Boeing’s senior vice president of quality, speaks to assembled media Tuesday in front of a slide detailing the door plug explosion that occurred on Jan. 5, 2024, on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282.

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Jennifer Buchanan/Pool photo by The Seattle Times

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“We’ve definitely incorporated more repetition, more hands-on repetition,” said Kayla Abusham, an electrical instructor.

“It’s a lot more complicated,” Abusham said, forcing the trainees to focus on the details of how to record the work as they do it, “just like they would in real life.”

At another station in the training center, Zach Jackson shows reporters the correct way to drill holes in sheet metal. Jackson started working at Boeing in 1978. He left in the 1990s. Then, a few years ago, she decided to return to help train the next generation.

“I love this place. That’s why I’m still here. I’m here to help,” Jackson said. “My son works here now. “He never wanted to work for Boeing, but I convinced him.”

How did Jackson convince him?

“I showed him my salary,” he says with a laugh.

Boeing is not the only company in the aerospace industry that has lost a lot of experience on the ground. So does Spirit AeroSystems, the main supplier building the 737 fuselage in Wichita, Kansas.

Boeing is in talks to buy most of the Spirit planes Restoring a factory that was sold nearly 20 years ago.

The two companies have already made some changes to reduce the number of production errors before the fuselage reaches the Boeing factory.

An orange stripe marks a slightly raised rivet near the mid-cabin door seal on a 737 MAX plane at Boeing’s 737 factory in Renton, Wash., on Tuesday.

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Jennifer Buchanan/Pool photo by The Seattle Times

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“You can see above the door here, there’s a piece of orange tape,” said Katie Ringgold, vice president and general manager of the Boeing 737 program, and head of the plant where the planes are assembled.

Ringgold points to a piece of tape marking a single rivet on the fuselage of a production aircraft, which is very prominent from the skin. But overall, Ringgold says problems with new fuselages have decreased in recent months.

“Although we are still not perfect, we have seen a significant reduction in defects here that were caused by our supplier,” Reingold said.

Federal regulators have limited Boeing’s 737 production to 38 planes per month, and Ringgold says the company is producing less than that.

“My focus is not the rate. My focus is on stabilizing this plant through safety and quality changes that are paramount,” she said.

Ultimately, Boeing will have to speed up production if it wants to satisfy airlines eager for new planes, not to mention investors and analysts on Wall Street.

But for now, company leaders say their focus is on getting every nail and rivet right.

Katie Ringgold, vice president and general manager of the 737 program, speaks to gathered media at the Boeing 737 factory on Tuesday.

Jennifer Buchanan/Pool photo by The Seattle Times

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Jennifer Buchanan/Pool photo by The Seattle Times