Restoring trust in engineering culture

By now, Boeing’s recent engineering issues are familiar to most people. There were the two deadly crashes of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft in 2018 and 2019 that killed more than 350 people. Plus, we’ve seen the recent incident of an aircraft door plug falling off in midair and allegations of structural defects in the 787 Dreamliner fuselage revealed by whistleblowers within the company. Boeing’s design and manufacturing is being subjected to increased public scrutiny as well as government investigative committees from the NTSB, FAA, and even the U.S. Department of Justice.

The casual observer might be asking the simple question, “What happened?”

Founded in Seattle in 1916 by William E. Boeing, the company once had the well-earned reputation of an “engineer’s company,” run by engineers who held their work in the highest regard and took seriously the design and building of some of the most complicated and amazing flying machines on the planet.

That changed when Boeing merged with McDonnell-Douglas in 1997. That merger precipitated a shift in Boeing’s culture away from an engineer-centered one to one more oriented towards financial issues that executives and management were concerned with.

What does all of this mean for the profession of engineering itself?

To put it as simply as possible — if the public can no longer trust a company like Boeing (which for many decades had the well-earned reputation of being an engineering company focused on quality and safety) to design and build these highly complex pieces of machinery that put their lives in the hands of so many people involved in its successful and safe operation, then it seems to me that we have a problem. And not an insignificant one, at that.

The fact is that producing a product, any product, that emphasizes high quality and safety leads to greater trust in that product and company. And it’s that trust that is at the foundation of success.

Some recent polling of the American public conducted by Gallop asked people to rank professions in order of those they trust most to least. Perhaps not surprisingly, lawyers, politicians, car salespeople, and stockbrokers were near the bottom of the list. But near the top? Engineers. In fact, the top five most trusted professions included nurses, doctors, and veterinarians, with engineers coming in at #3.

That is good and, I’d argue, as it should be. After all, there is not a single area of life in which engineering does not play a significant role. Engineering and the products of engineering touch all aspects of modern life.

The public trusts that the products they buy and use, the planes they board and fly, the vehicles they drive, the elevators they ride to the heights of buildings, the surgical equipment in the operating room — and so much more — was built to work as designed. This includes being of high quality and being safe to use. Engineering as a profession is obligated to ensure that that is the case. If that involves pushing back against aggressive cost-cutting measures that jeopardize quality and safety, then that is what must be done. Otherwise, we risk peril.