Problems and challenges a path to the future

Extract

This is a story of trouble and action—of an industry's trouble—of a company's, and in particular a division's actions, to ensure that there would be, in fact, a path to the future. The future, it turns out, probably will never be quite the same as the past—and I will cover some of that too. I have titled the three parts of the story Reduction in Cost, Increase in Sales, and Results and Comments.

Part of the material contained in this paper was originally written in early 1972 when I was Vice-President and General Manager of Boeing's largest commercial division, the one with which the paper is primarily concerned. The material was written for presentation to the management of another company in serious trouble. The story is that of a traumatic series of years in the life of one of the world's major companies. It is viewed of necessity from my position at that time as head of the company's largest division and does not constitute an official history of that period of life of The Boeing Company, even though some of the charts apply to the company as a whole rather than to just the division involved.