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Troubled plane-maker Boeing is changing the way it trains new recruits at the factory where it assembles the 737 Max. Boeing leaders say that is part of a broader effort to improve quality after a door plugged panel blew off a jet in mid-air. The company recently gave reporters a rare glimpse inside the factory near Seattle. NPR's Joel Rose was there.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: Boeing assembles the 737 in a massive factory that holds more than a dozen unfinished planes on this day, with their shiny green fuselages lined up nose to tail. But before Boeing's new hires get to work on these planes, they spend a few months next door at Boeing's training center, learning the basics.
DERRICK FARMER: Every bolt, every washer, every rivet, the locations of it, it all matters.
ROSE: Derek Farmer worked as an aviation mechanic in the Army, helping to keep Boeing helicopters in the air for nine years. Now Farmer is learning how to build the planes. He says the level of detail is a lot to take in, even for him.
FARMER: Everything has a name, everything has a measurement. Everything has a place, and it's just mind-blowing, the detail. That's really what surprised me.
ROSE: Boeing has been on a hiring spree, adding thousands of new workers to make up for the experienced employees who left in droves during the COVID pandemic. The company says that lack of experience contributed to quality control problems, problems the company is now scrambling to fix after a door plugged panel blew out of a relatively new 737 Max in midair when a worker or workers in this factory failed to reinstall four key bolts that were supposed to hold that door plug in place.
ELIZABETH LUND: I am extremely confident that the actions that we took have ensured that every airplane leaving this factory is safe. I feel very confident that it will not happen again.
ROSE: Elizabeth Lund is Boeing's senior vice president for quality. She says Boeing has made a lot of changes since the door plug incident, making sure work is performed in the right sequence, documenting it correctly, and also rethinking how the company trains new hires.
LUND: It worked before, when we didn't have the high quantity of new people coming in.
ROSE: With so many new people coming on board, Lund says, they weren't getting as much on-the-job training from experienced employees.
LUND: Having that person who was there with them, helping them do their job, that relationship wasn't as strong as it had previously been.
ROSE: Now, Boeing has responded by creating a formal mentoring program, adding several additional weeks of foundational training and revising its training materials to make them more hands on.
KAYLA ABUSHAM: Did you hear that little popping noise? Sounds like a knuckle popping. That's the goal.
ROSE: Kayla Abusham demonstrates the right way to tie a bundle of wires together. Abusham is a trainer in the electrical department.
ABUSHAM: We have definitely incorporated more repetition, a lot more hands-on repetition. It really makes them focus on harnessing it on the details, just like how they would do on the floor.
(SOUNDBITE OF POWER TOOL WHIRRING)
ZACK JACKSON: That's good. Now - OK. Now, twirl your fingers...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: All right.
JACKSON: You get the hang of it. I got it. I got me a new hire.
ROSE: Zack Jackson shows reporters how to correctly drill a hole in sheet metal. Jackson started working at Boeing in 1978. He left during the '90s and then decided to come back a few years ago to help train the next generation.
JACKSON: I love this place. That's why I'm still here. I'm here to help. My son works here now. He never did want to work for Boeing, but I convinced him.
ROSE: How?
JACKSON: How? I showed him my paycheck (laughter).
ROSE: Boeing is not the only company in the aviation industry that's lost a lot of experience on the shop floor. So has Spirit AeroSystems, a key supplier that builds the fuselage for the 737 in Wichita, Kan. Boeing is in talks to buy most of Spirit, re-acquiring the factory it sold off almost 20 years ago. The two companies have already made some changes aimed at cutting down on the number of production errors before the fuselages arrive at Boeing's factory.
KATIE RINGGOLD: You can see right over the door here, there's a piece of orange tape. Anybody can guess what that might be?
ROSE: Katie Ringgold is in charge of Boeing's 737 program and the factory in Renton, Wash., where they're assembled. She points to a piece of tape marking one single rivet on the fuselage of a plane in production that's sticking out too far from the skin of the plane. But overall, Ringgold says problems with new fuselages have dropped in recent months.
RINGGOLD: And so, while still not perfect, we've seen a significant reduction in the defects found here that were caused by our supplier.
ROSE: Federal regulators have limited Boeing's production of the 737 to 38 jets per month. Ringgold says the company is making even fewer than that.
RINGGOLD: My focus is not right. My focus is stabilizing this factory with the safety and quality changes that are paramount.
ROSE: Eventually, Boeing will have to speed up production. It's going to satisfy the airlines that are eager for new planes, not to mention Wall Street. But for now, the company's leaders say their focus is on getting every bolt and rivet right. Joel Rose, NPR News, Seattle.
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