Boeing reorganizes engineering division
Published 8:57 pm Wednesday, January 6, 2010
The Boeing Co. has named leaders to head up its reorganized engineering division, which shares commercial airplanes and defense talent.
“Boeing’s reputation for engineering excellence is built on an array of outstanding products designed and developed under the guidance of strong engineering leaders,” said John Tracy, senior vice president of Engineering, Operations and Technology.
On Wednesday, Boeing assigned nine engineers as vice presidents of Engineering, Operations and Technology. Boeing has reorganized its engineers in an effort to make key engineers available as needed not only to its commercial airplanes division but to its defense division.
During an earnings call last January, Boeing Chief Executive Jim McNerney said the company would streamline its organization in 2009. McNerney noted the need for shared engineering resources as a lesson Boeing learned from the delays of its 787 jet program.
“We took too long to move back into a model that integrated functions that spanned the entire business that had disciplines, that allocated people most effectively, that shared best practices across programs,” McNerney said.
In December, Boeing reclassified approximately 3,500 commercial airplanes workers and 2,700 defense workers into the engineering division.
On Wednesday, Boeing named four vice presidents of the division from commercial airplanes and five from defense.
From commercial airplanes, Mike Delaney, former chief project engineer of the 787, becomes the vice president of airplane performance and product architecture. Keith Leverkuhn, former vice president of commercial airplanes propulsion systems, became vice president of propulsion systems. Jim Ogonowski was named vice president of airplane structures. He had served as chief structures engineer for the 787 program. Mike Sinnett will lead Boeing’s airplane systems after serving as vice president of systems for the 787 program.
As part of their new assignments, Delaney, Ogonowski and Sinnett will continue to focus on the 787 program, which Boeing has dubbed its “most important engineering challenge” for the commercial airplanes division.
From Boeing’s Integrated Defense Systems division, vice presidents include Bill Carrier, Laurette Lahey, Jack Murphy, Darrell Uchima and James Farricker. Boeing notes that its engineers have been crossing division lines on several projects over the past few years. More than 1,000 Integrated Defense Systems’ engineers have helped support commercial airplanes’ 787 and 777 programs over the past two years, while commercial airplanes engineers have helped Integrated Defense Systems resolve technical and flight test issues on the 767 international tanker program.
