The Boeing Co. is poised for growth, but that growth won’t result in the kind of hiring the region has seen in the past, a top Commercial Airplanes division executive said Friday.

A "leaner, more flexible Boeing" will be able to ride through the cycles of the commercial jet industry without the hiring-and-firing binges of the past, said Mike Cave, the company’s senior vice president for airplane programs.

"You’re not going to see the big, wild fluctuations in our population that drive us all crazy," he told the Everett Area Chamber of Commerce.

Boeing will end the practice of hiring large numbers of workers in boom times only to lay them off a few years later as orders run out, Cave said.

"A lot of us inside Boeing think that’s the all-time assault on a human being," he said.

Speaking at the chamber’s annual meeting at the Everett Events Center, Cave acknowledged that changes at Boeing in the past few years have led to a lot of speculation about the company’s direction.

Boeing has become a global enterprise, Cave said, "and that is a tough thing when it comes to jobs and the decisions we make."

However, "our motives aren’t evil," he said. "Our motives aren’t self-serving. They aren’t even very complicated when it gets right down to it."

Boeing’s plan is to focus on the things that it can make the most money doing and farm out the rest, Cave said.

That won’t mean major changes at the sprawling Everett factory, he said. "We have a vision to move forward, and it includes most of us."

Everett workers do the kind of "high-value" work that Boeing plans to keep in-house, Cave said. "We engineer and design products here. We final assemble them here. We flight-test them here."

Those jobs are the "highest-technology, most-skilled, highest-rewarded" that Boeing has, and they’ll stay in the community, he said.

The past year — marked by ethics scandals and Airbus finally eclipsing Boeing in annual deliveries — was a difficult one, Cave said. But the groundwork was laid for future success, he said, adding, "We’re going to reap a huge harvest."

Much of that was the result of work done by state and local governments in their effort to get Boeing to assemble the new 7E7 airliner in Everett, Cave said. "We’ve moved cultural light years in the state of Washington in one year," he said.

Boeing was the beneficiary of much of that, he added. However, more must be done to improve the business climate for all, Cave said.

"If we stay on this path of economic growth, we’re going to lead this state of Washington to heights it’s never seen before," he said.

Boeing’s suppliers will design and build large pieces of the 7E7, but "you’re still going to see several thousand Boeing engineers doing what Boeing engineers do best."

Airline interest in the new plane is high, and airlines are starting to recover, but "it’s a tough time to drum up a lot of firm orders," Cave said.

But a buyer will emerge, he predicted.

"Those airlines, we’re confident, will come forth in 2004 to buy that airplane," Cave said. "When that (first) airplane takes off from Paine Field, there are going to be a lot of logos on the side of it."

Reporter Bryan Corliss: 425-339-3454 or corliss@heraldnet.com.