Boeing’s Safety Officer Report- what’s missing?
Skies Magazine’s recent article on the Boeing CHIEF SAFETY OFFICER’S 2024 ANNUAL REPORT (CASO) highlighted that the use by employees of the company’s “Speak UP” tool HAS INCREASED 500% in early 2024.
The article does not discuss this important safety culture improvement and neither did the Boeing’s recent 11-PAGE summary of its “PRODUCT SAFETY AND QUALITY PLAN.” The document was part of the OEM’s release after its May30, 2024 FAA meeting on the Company’s Roadmap for Continuous Improvement.
The CASO is infinitely more impressive in explaining its actions in response to the FAA’s criticisms brought to bear after the Max 8 string of quality control problems. Here are some of the well-articulated statements of the new Safety Culture:
Strengthening our safety culture
Increased efforts to encourage employees to use the Speak Up reporting channel resulted in A MORE THAN 500% INCREASE in the number of submissions during the first two months of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023.
Conducted product safety training for more than 160,000 Boeing employees that reinforced the importance of speaking up about concerns or issues.
Introduced a digital learning platform to employees, enabling them to reflect, learn and apply safety lessons to their work.
Improving our safety practices
Established SMS Boards within program and functional organizations responsible for design, build and fleet support to ensure a bottom-up approach in identifying and resolving potential safety risks.
Began a pathfinding effort to share additional operational data with engineering teams on how Boeing products are operating in the field, allowing design engineers to validate that designs are working as intended.
Expanded EXTERNAL SAFETY DATA SOURCES AND DEVELOPED MACHINE LEARNING ALGORITHMS WITH THE FAA TO IDENTIFY EMERGING HAZARDS AND SAFETY TRENDS.
Continued the release of Design Practices to further strengthen the use of best practices and significantly increased the use of those practices during critical design activity through Technical Design Reviews.
Realigned the Boeing Internal Audit team in Commercial Airplanes Quality to report to the Chief Aerospace Safety Office to further the independence of the team to conduct their work as intended.
Named Chris Ferguson, former NASA astronaut and retired director of the CST-100 Starliner Program, as Deputy Chief Aerospace Safety Office for Human Space Flight to extend the foundation of safety of the Starliner Program in a systemic way across current and future space endeavors.
Speak Up [excerpts]
….
Boeing’s Speak Up employee reporting channel has received thousands of submissions since it WAS ESTABLISHED IN 2019.
Following the January 2024 737-9 accident, the company redoubled its effort to encourage employees to raise concerns about product and services safety, quality and compliance, resulting in a MORE THAN 500% INCREASE in number of Speak Up submissions during the first two months of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023. Increased reporting is A SIGN OF PROGRESS toward a robust reporting culture.
A new collaboration launched by Boeing, the International Association of Machinists (IAM) 751 in Washington state and the FAA is advancing Speak Up’s mission by implementing AN EVENT REVIEW COMMITTEE, ERC, based on the model used by airline operators and outlined in FAA advisory material. The implementation of the ERC should ensure issues, concerns and events are raised quickly and reviewed in a fair and factual manner. Representatives from each organization come together to review certain product safety-related issues reported through Speak Up by IAM 751-represented employees.
They apply human-centric principles called Just Culture that focus on understanding all of the organizational, technical, operational and human factors behind errors and mistakes. understand how to create an environment where employees feel safe and empowered to report errors and are treated fairly for making them, thus enabling learning to prevent them from happening again.
…
Just Culture holds both systems and people accountable for their contributions to incidents and doesn’t tolerate negligence or malicious behavior.
In addition, more than 160,000 employees participated in product safety training that reinforced the importance of speaking up about concerns or mistakes, as well as the culture that supports such transparency. Increased reporting is a sign of progress toward a robust reporting culture. 2024 reflects reports submitted during the first two month
The CASO states that “Speak UP” was established in 2018 and according to multiple reports the submissions were AT BEST ignored. While some increase in the number of SMS concerns is positive, suggesting that the employees may now trust this safety process, THE REAL ENHANCEMENT OF BOEING’s JUST CULTURE is the announcement of the EVENT REVIEW COMMITTEE (ERC). This element of a standard SMS process is designed to INVOLVE ALL in the identification, risk analysis/ quantification, prioritization and design of remedial actions. This step fosters collaboration, buy-in for the agreed upon resolution and support for the employees’ trust in and submissions to SMS. According to the Independent Review teams, these aspects of Boeing’s culture—Board to C level to engineers to inventory control to QA/QC to the thousands of professionals who do the work—were absent based on this independent assessment. Properly implemented, ERC most likely will address this Boeing safety malaise.
After all of those positive comments, the absence of CASO mentioning ERC outcomes—
- how many Safety Complaints were resolved collaboratively by the ERC teams,
- how many resulted in proactive responses,
- whether ERC rejections of SMS submissions were agreed to by all of the team,
- whether the employees briefed by ERC on why their idea could not be adopted,
- a positive note, did the ACCOUNTABLE EXECUTIVE[1] (AE) reinforce the value of SMS participation by announcing the suggestions adopted or even rewarding the employee initiative.
- no mention of the AE’s participation in the ERC; the person so designated must demonstrate commitment to the SMS process and remind the ERC team of the CEO’s recognition of a successful ERC process.
The lack of detail about the workings of the ERC is disconcerting. Yes, more employees have used SPEAK UP, but without the AE’s sharing with the employees the value of their SMS contributions, a 2nd or 3rd submissions will not occur. The process’ integrity is important to reestablish TRUST. The AE’s publicizing the SMS results will bring the rank and file into the Safety Culture that is essential. Positive news is more viral than COVID, in a good sense.
++++++++++++++
By Skies Magazine | June 3, 2024
t
Boeing has published its third annual Chief Aerospace Safety Officer (CASO) Report outlining the company’s progress in improving its product safety and safety culture.
The plane maker has been under fire recently following several safety incidents involving its aircraft, such as the Alaska Airlines 737-9 midair door plug blowout (January 2024), the LATAM Airlines 787 mid-air drop (March 2024), and the loss of an engine cowling on a Southwest Airlines 737-800 (April 2024). Of course, these incidents follow the 20-month grounding of Boeing’s 737 Max fleet after two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019.
In its CASO Report, Boeing notes that it is working on implementing changes based on safety recommendations from a Congressionally authorized and FAA-initiated expert panel. The report also highlights the company’s ongoing efforts on long-term safety initiatives with customers and industry partners.
“We are entrusted with the safety of all those who fly on, use, operate, and maintain our products,” said MIKE DELANEY, Boeing’s Chief Aerospace Safety Officer. “Our actions are focused on making further improvements to ensure safety, compliance, and conformance of our products and services, without compromise. Our commitment is to never forget our responsibility to make sure every action and decision bring lasting improvements to the safety and quality of our products and services.”
Last year, the company launched a digital learning platform called Safety Experience at Boeing to help employees incorporate safety lessons into their daily tasks, and also launched “Just Culture Guiding Principles” to foster an environment “where employees feel safe and empowered to report errors,” the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) said.
Following the Alaska Airlines 737-9 incident in January, Boeing said it “redoubled” efforts to encourage employees to report concerns related to product and service safety, quality, and compliance. As a result, the manufacturer saw a more than 500 per cent increase in submissions to its “Speak Up” reporting channel in early 2024, compared to the same period in 2023.
In April, Boeing introduced “substantial improvements” to its Manufacturing and Quality training program after six weeks of assessment — taking into account feedback from employees and the FAA.
“Now, each new employee receives 10 to 14 weeks of foundational skills training before moving to the production floor, which is one to two weeks more on average per teammate,” Boeing said in a May 23 update. “New hires are then paired with a workplace coach or peer trainer on the factory floor for structured on-the-job training and won’t work on their own until they demonstrate established proficiency measures.”
[1] The CASO neither identified NOR the AE even mention the value of an active, visible apostle of SMS and a Safety Culture. The last Boeing report made indicated that the CEO was the AE.
+++++++++++++++++++
