Wed, Sep 09, 2009
That Will Require More Than Management Changes, Analysts
Say
When Jim Albaugh took over from Scott Carson as CEO of Boeing's
commercial airplane division at the end of August, he inherited an
airplane program that has been fraught with problems and delayed by
more than two years, and industry analysts say restoring faith in
the Dreamliner will be one of Albaugh's biggest challenges.
Philip Finnegan, director of corporate analysis for the Teal
Group, said in the Puget Sound Business Journal “The problem
is there have been so many surprises, so many disappointments, that
Boeing still has an uphill battle in terms of re-establishing
credibility on the 787.” The company tracks the aerospace and
defense industries.
The changes at the top of Boeing are also being closely watched
by those with an interest in where the Dreamliner is eventually
manufactured. The production facility in Washington State currently
is the only production line for the 787, but the company's purchase
of a plant in South Carolina from supplier Vought Aircraft
Industries has many in the Seattle area nervous about jobs moving
east. Boeing and the Dreamliner account for a large percentage of
the area's exports and gross domestic product, either directly or
through an economic ripple effect, and analysts say Carson was a
major advocate of the Everett facility.
They're not so certain about Albaugh, who was in St. Louis
before taking the top job in the commercial airplane division,
though some industry experts say the decision-making process will
be the same. “There’s going to be a detailed analysis
around that decision,” Peter Jacobs, an analyst in Seattle
with Ragen MacKenzie, told The Business Journal. “Jim Albaugh
will have the same set of inputs that Scott Carson would have
used.”
Jim Albaugh
Meanwhile, some analysts think Boeing has become too dependent
on government contracts, and may no longer have the proper focus on
the civilian airliner market. Marco Caceres, a space industry
analyst with the Teal Group, told the paper “I don’t
know if they are hungry enough to compete in the
marketplace.”
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