Abstract
By the 1990s, with the Cold War over, the US Aerospace Enterprise found itself in uncharted waters, and the institutions, accumulated infrastructure, and organizations designed for the successful campaign to thwart Communism were without a rudder. To make matters worse, a host of other destabilizing forces — which had been masked by the Cold War — suddenly appeared. The Cold War’s end unleashed a wave of commotion that affected not only the military sector of the US Aerospace Enterprise, but also the commercial and civil space sectors. The once shared interests of aerospace customers, workers, and manufacturers had become misaligned, and products had matured. As the new millennium began, the US Aerospace Enterprise needed a new equilibrium.
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Notes
M. L.Tushman and P.Anderson, in ‘Technological Discontinuities and Organizational Environments’, Administrative Science Quarterly 31(1986), 439–65, distinguish between competency-destroying and competency-enhancing discontinuities — that is, those changes that destroy and make obsolete the current way of producing a product versus those changes that do not destroy competency but that innovate and improve on existing competencies.
Since the late 1980s,there have been several ‘wakeup calls’ regarding a US manufacturing crisis, including in aerospace. For a seminal example, see M. L. Dertouzos, R K Lester, R. M. Solow, and the MIT Commission on Industrial Productivity, Made in Americo: Regaining the Productive Edge (Cambridge, MA:The MIT Press, 1989).
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S. R. Fisher, ‘Downsizing in a Learning Organization: Are There Hidden Costs?’, The Academy of Management Review 25: 1(2000), 244–52.
W. B. Scott, ‘People Issues are Cracks in Aero Industry Foundation’, Aviation Week & Space Technology (June 21st, 1999), 65.
W. B. Scott, ‘Launch Failures Cripple US Space Prowess’, Aviation Week & Space Technology (May 3rd, 1999), 32.
J. Klein, Presentation to the Lean Aircraft Initiative Plenary Workshop on ‘Continuous Improvement and Job Security’, MIT Sloan School of Management (December 12th, 1995).
See comments in two books: M. Hammer, Beyond Reengineering: How the Process-Centered Organization is Changing Our Work and Our Lives (New York HarperBusiness, 1996); and M. Hammer, The Agenda: What Every Business Must Do to Dominate the Decade (New York: Random House/Crown Business, 2001). In the latter, Hammer opens with a reflective look at his past ‘take-no-prisoners, bum-it-down-and-start-over approach to making businesses better’, and states:‘I was wrong.’ Still committed to dramatic change, he notes that there is no single solution, and that there are significant considerations around what we term ‘intellectual capital’.
In 1989, the Chrysler Corporation initiated a new method of working with suppliers: the company would choose suppliers early on and give them significant, if not total, design responsibility. See J. H. Dyer, ‘How Chrysler Created an American Keiretsu’, Harvard Business Review (July—August 1996), 5. The delegation of greater responsibility to key suppliers with increased accountability resulted in improved on-time delivery, higher quality, and significant cost reductions.
W. Stowers, Presentation at the Boeing Suppliers Conference, Seattle, Washington (October 1st, 1998). Stower is Vice President, Procurement, Boeing Military Aircraft and Missiles Systems.
C. H. Fine, Clockspeed.•Winning Industry Control in the Age ofTemporaryAdvantage (Reading, MA: Perseus Books, 1998), p. 69.
The Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) program, for instance, reduced the number of military specifications from 87 to zero and cut procurement costs by 50 percent (Chapter 5 details other improvements).There were also notable successes in the Joint Primary Aircraft Training System QPATS) and the Commercial Derivative Engine (CDE). See Pilot Program Consulting Group, ‘Compendium of Pilot Program Reports’ (1997) and ‘Defense Reform Performance: Affordable Defense for the 21st Century’ (April 1999), available at http://www.acq.osd.mil, the website of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition Reform.
D. S. Goldin, Statement before the US Senate Subcommittee on Science,Technology, and Space of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation (March 22nd, 2000). Goldin is the NASA Administrator.
Mars Climate Orbiter Mishap Investigation Board, ‘Report on Project Management in NASA’ (March 13th, 2000).
K. Lewin, Field Theory in Socfal Sciences (NewYork: Harper & Row, 1951).
E. A. Cohen, ‘Defending America in the Twenty-first Century’, Foreign Affairs 79:6 (November/December 2000), 40–56. Cohen writes, ‘Following the logic of the so-called Bottom-Up Review of the early Clinton administration and then the 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review, American forces now aim at fighting two “Major Theater Wars” (MTWs) — presumably against North Korea and Iraq. … The two-MTW strategy requires almost the same force structure as did the Base Force; a dispassionate observer would be hard-pressed to see much difference between the two. And neither strategy suffices today The ‘Base Forre’to which Cohen refers is the force planned in 1989–90 as a cautious post-Cold War force, somewhat smaller than the peak Cold War force, but with similar structures — in Cohen’s words, ‘a stopgap to remain until the Russian threat was clearly gone’.
M. Duffy, ‘Rumsfeld: Older But Wiser?’, Time (August 27th, 2001), 22.
McNutt (1999) — see Note 10, Chapter 2. McNutt used the following source: J. M. Jarvaise, J. A. Drezner, and D. Norton, The Defense System Cost Performance Database: Cost Growth Analysis Using Selected Acquisition Reports (Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, 1996), MR-625-OSD.The data were current as of December 1994.
J. P. Womack, ‘Working Toward Hassle-Free Solutions’, AviationWeek & Space Technology (January 1st, 2000), 52.
Dr William Ballhaus, Lockheed Martin’s corporate Vice President For Science and Engineering, in an interview for the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics 1999 strategic plan:‘The engineering workplace has changed.The context for engineering has changed. Graduates must be able to adapt to the dramatic shift in the industrial working environment with: 1) a good grasp of engineering science fundamentals; 2) a good understanding of the design and manufacturing process; 3) a multi-disciplinary system perspective; 4) ability to think both critically and creatively; 5) flexibility and ability to adapt to rapid/major change; 6) curiosity and a desire to learn — for life; and 7) a profound understanding of the importance of teamwork.’ See also: The Boeing Company, ‘Desired Attributes of an Engineer: Participation with Universities’ (1996), at http://www.boeing.com/companyoffices/pwu/attributes/attributes.html.
Accreditation Board of Engineering andTechnology (ABET), Criteria forAccrediting Engineering Programs: Effective for Evaluations During the 2000–2001 Accreditation Cycle (Revised March 2000); MIT School of Engineering Committee on Undergraduate Education, ‘Eight Goals of an Undergraduate Education’ (Cambridge, MA: 1998); E. F. Crawley, ‘The CDIO Syllabus: A Statement of Goals for Undergraduate Engineering Education’ (Cambridge, MA: MIT CDIO Report # 1, January 2001).
D. Patillo, Pushing the Envelope:The American AircraftIndustry (Ann Arbor, MI:The University of Michigan Press, 1998).
L. Thurow, in Building Wealth: The New Rules for Individuals, Componies and Nations in a Knowledge-Based Economy (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), identifies the ability to accept risk as a key advantage that has reestablished the United States as the world’s economic leader.
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© 2002 The Lean Enterprise Value Foundation, Inc.
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Murman, E. et al. (2002). Monuments and Misalignments. In: Lean Enterprise Value. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403907509_3
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