Boeing: Eight decades in plane business
By K. Basrie
BELLEVUE, Washington (JP): To many Indonesians, Boeing is a familiar name. Even long before the names of most of its rival companies became popular, Boeing was known by ordinary Indonesians as a company which made machines that flew.
Today, even in the face of fierce competition from other major airplane producing companies of the world, such as McDonnell Douglas and Airbus Industrie, Boeing is still a well known name in Indonesia, in particular in the eyes of airline companies, both state-run and privately-owned.
On the other hand, to many of the 117,000 men and women working for the Boeing company worldwide, Indonesia is a quite familiar name. This is because of this country's flag carrier, Garuda Indonesia, and the IPTN aircraft manufacturing plant.
Thus, under a joint arrangement with Cathay Pacific, Boeing recently invited a group of reporters from several parts of the world to take a look at several of its divisions that are located in Bellevue, in the American state of Washington. This tour included a visit to one of its gigantic plants, where the firm's latest model, the B-777, are manufactured and assembled.
It would probably take dozens of hours of sightseeing and briefing to become closely familiar with the extent of the work that is done here. But even on a brief visit it is easy to conclude that the process of developing and building a new aircraft is a lengthy one which takes a multi-billion dollar investment. The risks of failure are great, but the huge profits that can be gained warrant the effort.
Commercial
The Boeing Company is organized along three major business segments: commercial airplane development and manufacturing, defense and space and computer services.
The Boeing Commercial Airplane Group, with about 73,000 employees, is the company's most visible business undertaking with a current average combined production rate of 18.5 units a month. Of the 12,000-plus commercial aircraft made since the jet age began, Boeing claims to have built more than 7,000.
This group has three major divisions in the Seattle-Puget Sound area of Washington State. The divisions are located respectively in Renton, south of Seattle on the shore of Lake Washington where B-737s and B-757s are built, at Everett, 45 kilometers north of Seattle where the larger airplanes, the B- 747s, B-767s and B-777s are manufactured, and at Autburn, about 26 kilometers south of Renton, where raw materials are processed at the Boeing Fabrication Division.
The Everett assembly building occupies an area about as large as 90 football fields and was built at a cost of approximately $1.7 billion.
The Defense and Space Group conducts virtually all of the company's business with the U.S. Defense Department and NASA. Defense and space programs include the development and building of helicopters, military aircraft, missiles, advanced electronic systems, rocket boosters and some other portions of the U.S. space project for the 1990s. America's most elite fleet consisting of the three Boeing-built battery-powered lunar rovers is "parked" on the moon. Air Force-One, the American presidential plane, is a modification of the B-747.
The Boeing Computer Services, with headquarters in Bellevue, is founded mainly to support the needs of the company, including systems development, data processing and telecommunications.
More than 50 percent of the hardware for some Boeing models is produced by others, both in the U.S. and overseas. Boeing works with more than 30,000 domestic suppliers and 300 foreign sources located in 23 countries.
History
The company was founded by William E. Boeing in Seattle on July 15, 1916, under the name Pacific Aero Products. It changed its name to Boeing Airplane Company nine months later.
William Boeing took his first plane ride in 1915, a dozen years after the Wright brothers made their first flight. Boeing was in the timber business, but he and a friend, Conrad Westervelt, decided they could build a better airplane than was available at that time. In 1916 the first of two "B&Ws" was launched. The B&W was a single-engine seaplane with a top speed of 75 mph.
When the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, the Navy ordered 50 of Boeing's next aircraft, the two-seat Model C trainer. During the next few years, the company designed and built nearly two dozen different models, most of them military aircraft.
During World War II, Boeing played a key part in the Allied war effort by building the famous B-17 and B-29 bombers. An aircraft of the latter model is widely known as the bomber which dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
After the war, Boeing set the standard for jet bombers with the B-47, and the B-52 which is still flown today.
Foreseeing the huge market for commercial jet aircraft, the company later developed the B-707, the first Boeing passenger jet, which was introduced in 1958. It was followed in successive years by the B-727, B-737, B-747, B-757, B-767 and the newest, the B-777, which made its maiden service flight this month.
Today, Boeing is best known for its commercial jets, which are flown by carriers of more than 120 countries. In 1994 the company's sales recorded $21.9 billion, which represented a decline from the $25.4 billion recorded in the previous year. The company nevertheless claims it has been ranking as the United States' number-one aircraft exporter for the past five years, with more than half of its revenues derived from foreign sales.
The founder of the Boeing Company, as it is known today, died at the age of 74 in 1956.