At the factory that builds the 737 Max, Boeing is rethinking how it trains new employees

RENTON, Wash. — Boeing assembles the 737 here in a vast factory that houses more than a dozen unfinished planes, their gleaming green fuselages lined up nose to tail.

But before Boeing’s new employees start working on these planes, they spend a few months at Boeing’s training center, where they learn the basics.

“Everything has a name, everything has a size, everything has a place. And the details are simply astonishing,” says Derrick Farmer, who is about two months into his training at Boeing.

Farmer worked as an aviation mechanic in the Army for nine years, helping to keep Boeing helicopters in the air. Now that he’s learning how to build the planes, Farmer says the level of detail is a lot to take in, even for him.

“Every bolt, every washer, every rivet,” he said. “It all matters.”

Boeing has been busy hiring, adding thousands of new workers to compensate for the experienced workers who left en masse during the COVID pandemic.

Now Boeing is changing the way it trains new recruits at the plant where it assembles the 737 Max, part of a broader effort to improve quality control after a door plug panel blew off a relatively new plane in mid-air. This week, the company gave reporters a rare look inside the 737 factory near Seattle — the same factory where a Boeing worker or workers failed to reinstall the four key bolts that hold the door plug in place.

“I am confident that the actions we have taken have ensured that every aircraft that leaves this factory is safe,” said Elizabeth Lund, Boeing Senior Vice President of Quality. “I am confident this will not happen again.”

Lund says Boeing has made many changes since the door plug incident. The company has added new steps to ensure that work is performed in the correct sequence and that it is properly documented.

And Lund says Boeing is rethinking the way the company trains new employees.

“It worked before when we weren’t getting as many new people,” she told reporters this week. But with so many new people coming on board, Lund says they didn’t get as much on-the-job training from experienced employees.

“Having that person there to be with them and help them do their job. That relationship was not as strong as before,” she said.

Boeing has responded by creating a formal mentoring program, Lund said. A number of additional weeks of basic training have been added, from a maximum of 12 weeks before to 14 weeks now. And the company is revising its training materials to make them more hands-on.

“We’ve definitely introduced more repetition, a lot more hands-on repetition,” said Kayla Abusham, a trainer in the electrical department.

“It’s a lot more complex,” Abusham said, requiring students to focus on the details of how to record work along the way, “just as they would do it on the job.”

At another station at the training center, Zach Jackson shows reporters the proper way to drill holes in sheet metal. Jackson started working at Boeing in 1978. He left in the 1990s. And then decided to come back a few years ago to help train the next generation.

“I love this place. That’s why I’m still here. I’m here to help,” Jackson said. “My son works here now. He never wanted to work for Boeing, but I convinced him.”

How did Jackson convince him?

“I showed him my salary,” he says, laughing.

Boeing is not the only company in the aviation industry that has lost a lot of experience on the work floor. That includes Spirit AeroSystems, a major supplier that builds the fuselage for the 737 in Wichita, Kan.

Boeing is in talks to acquire most of Spirit, reacquiring the factory it sold almost twenty years ago.

The two companies have already made some changes to reduce production defects before the fuselages arrive at the Boeing factory.

“You can see a piece of orange tape above the door here,” said Katie Ringgold, vice president and general manager of Boeing’s 737 program and head of the plant where the jets are assembled.

Ringgold points to a piece of tape marking a single rivet on the fuselage of a production aircraft that protrudes too far from the skin. But overall, Ringgold says problems with new hulls have diminished in recent months.

“So while still not perfect, we have seen a significant reduction in the defects found here that were caused by our supplier,” Ringgold said.

Federal regulators have limited production of Boeing 737s to 38 jets per month, and Ringgold says the company is producing even fewer.

“My focus is not on speed. My focus is on stabilizing this plant with the safety and quality changes that are of utmost importance,” she said.

Ultimately, Boeing will have to speed up production if it wants to satisfy airlines eager for new planes, not to mention investors and analysts on Wall Street.

But for now, company leaders say their focus is on getting every bolt and rivet right.

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