In a previous post, I wrote about corporate culture based on the Toyota’s recall case. In the post, I discussed communication among different engineering teams, and wrote “Now I imagine how they have established the system. Did anyone take initiative to communicate among development teams? Or did anyone establish a system to share information among different teams whether or not they are willing to communicate?”. Recently I found an internet article that shows a case in which the latter system does not work.
Probably many people know the nightmare of Boeing 787 Dreamliner. I found an internet article that introduces insight into it. Boeing outsourced the majority of engineering and construction of the plane, expecting it would reduce the development cost and time. But the result was totally opposite. To make a long story short, Boeing could not manage communication with and among partners. According to the article, Boeing adopted, or at least tried to adopt Toyota’s outsourcing system. But they only superficially adopted the structure of the system and did not lean the culture. Boeing introduced a web-based communication tool to share information with partners, like I imagined as in the previous post, and it failed.
Now I am sure about two things. First, communication among engineering teams is not easy. Second, copying a system does not work unless the corporate culture is understood and introduced appropriately. Probably I will face situation like this in some degree in the future.