Mary-Louise Hoffman
Jim McNerney, CEO of Boeing, told shareholders Wednesday that the company wants to adopt an incremental strategy to build passenger airplanes instead of taking a once-a-generation development approach, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
“Our mind-set will be to avoid the moon shot,” McNerney said at the company’s annual investor meeting held Wednesday in Seattle.
McNerney added that Boeing seeks to emulate automobile and consumer electronics manufacturers that use incremental methods when developing their products, according to WSJ.
WSJ reports that Boeing is working to simplify the way it builds airplanes in order to address a large order backlog.
“We are set to break the cost curve,” Dennis Muilenburg, Boeing’s president and chief operating officer, was quoted as saying.
“We’re still going to deliver what in some cases is revolutionary capability,” said Muilenburg. “The way we deliver that capability will be to build on technology that we have.”
Ray Conner, president of Boeing’s commercial airplanes business, was quoted as saying that cancellation rates for the Boeing commercial jet family are well below the historical average.
