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Effective Integration at Boeing

Boeing’s transition from a multidisciplinary approach to an interdisciplinary approach led

to much success with their development of the Boeing 777 aircraft. Traditionally, Boeing had

employed a multidisciplinary system where experts in each area of development would focus on

their area of expertise (Thomas, 2011). This led to a linear or sequential system of task

interdependence in which members essentially operated an assembly line where each member

has a specific skill or task to perform (Thompson, 2016). According to Boeing CEO Phil Condit,

this resulted in people at the front end not knowing that much about the back end (Thomas,

2014).

With the Boeing 777 development teams, the company transitioned to an interdisciplinary

approach. This entailed people of many disciplines working collaboratively to arrive at the

optimum solution to a problem (Thomas, 2011). The development team for the 777 had high

reciprocal task interdependence, which Thompson describes as every member dependent on

others at all levels (2016). Boeing’s focus was for the team to cross functional boundaries and

even began their mission statement with the words, “working together” (Thomas, 2014).

Members from all levels of the business and from all points of the development process were

brought together and involved in every stage. This led to results which CEO Condit praised as

“better parts, produced in a better way that fit together better” (Thomas, 2014). As Thompson

points out, with reciprocal interdependence “all team members know the overall objectives of the

team and may feel more accountable” (2016, p.44).

The most representative description of Boeing’s 777 design/build teams would be a

multi-team system (MTS) in which “two or more teams interface directly and interdependently

in response to environmental contingencies towards the accomplishment of shared goals”

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Thompson, 2016, p.265). At the top levels, Boeing’s design/build teams consisted of members

from nearly every aspect of its business, including suppliers, customers, manufacturers, tooling,

planners, marketing, etc. (Thomas, 2014). Thompson highlights that such members may have

different proximal goals they are pursuing, but that they share at least one goal (2016). In

Boeing’s case, suppliers might have had inventory goals they wished to fulfill, while marketers

had ideal sales targets in mind. However, all parties had an overarching goal to work together to

design a superior airplane. By involving the customer in the design/build team at the top level,

Condit claims they were able to gain information about things they never knew- little things that

taken together made a dramatically better product (Thomas, 2014). Allowing for the customer

perspective enabled the team to identify needs and make small changes that translated to major

convenience and desirability for the ultimate end users.

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References

Thomas, D. (2014). BIS 343 DT2 Video Clip [Video]. Vimeo.

https://vimeo.com/82302290?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&owner=972427

Thomas, D. (2011). Key Concepts in Interdisciplinarity [Unpublished article]. Arizona State

University.

Thompson, L. (2016). Making the Team: A Guide for Managers (6th ed.). Pearson.