Recent remarks by Boeing CEO Jim McNerney about creating a so-called no-fly list of suppliers who fail to meet certain standards for quality, speed of delivery and cost has turned a spotlight on the company’s four supply chain management heads, all tasked with implementing the boss’s decree within their respective areas of responsibility and keeping vigil for “divide and conquer” tactics sometimes employed by program partners. For example, Boeing Commercial Airplanes supplier management vice president and general manager Kent Fisher works closely with his counterpart at Boeing Defense, Space & Security, Jack House, to ensure that those suppliers who, in Fisher’s words, do inappropriate things with one part of the business can’t find their way onto programs in another part.
“Jim [McNerney] has put a fair amount of effort into making sure that the four supplier management leaders, myself included, are working together more and more and leveraging one Boeing,” said Fisher. “The main way that we do that is through ensuring that we have once common strategy for each of the suppliers that we share, and ensuring that we’re not working at cross-purposes with any specific supplier.
