M. Graeber JordanBoeing Web Program Manager 1995-1999 (retired) GJordan.com, LLCWorld-class, Industrial-strength IntranetsTM
What others have said - the story in excerpts(chronological) Boeing network takes flight with pioneering intranet project "The Boeing Web is used for just about everything today," said Meadows [proxy server manager]. "Web servers allow us to create a 'pull' information system, rather than pushing information out to employees, who could care less about certain items." Access to the intranet is open to any employee, though one of the biggest challenges is to continue to enhance and preserve the security of the Boeing Web from outsiders, said Meadows. Currently, the Boeing Web is walled off from the rest of the Internet, with Boeing employees gaining access through two centrally managed proxy servers. PC Week, Feb 19,1996 Intranets - For employees eyes only. A business revolution is rising, one poised to break down the monolithic structures of large companies that often block communication and information...But aside from allowing instant intranet answers - and thus productivity - corporate intranets have symbolic power...the will to create [web sites] comes from individual groups and divisions. The Seattle Times, Jun 2, 1996 E-commerce: wired for profits ..."It costs the airlines about $40,000 a minute to have a plane like the 747 on the ground when it's supposed to be flying," says Craig Savio...To address this issue, Boeing will inaugurate this month a new on-line system that will enable the company's customers to quickly locate, order, and track shipments of aircraft spare parts...using Web technology and the Internet... Datamation, Oct 1996 Boeing Wings It, and It Works -- Hands-Off Approach to Intranet Project Yields Creative Uses ...internal use of the Web addresses two of the biggest corporate problems. One is basic communication, the other is simply staying current. "The Web allows you to do both," [Nancy Cook, a curriculum developer and senior manager of leadership program development] said. "It can help you change corporate culture." Boeing is a culture of heroes, Cook said--heroes who learn by solving problems, then are expected to share that knowledge with others. Web Week, Jan 20, 1997 Boeing Intranet Takes Off -- Mammoth net being built by aerospace company could become the standard for large corporate networks Several observers of Boeing's budding intranet are calling it the standard by which large corporate nets will be measured. The Boeing Internal Web has already facilitated two of last year's biggest deals for the commercial airline, defense and space contractor... "The Web is not very structured, and we don't want to overstructure," said M. Graeber Jordan, senior manager of electronic commerce deployment for Boeing's Information & Support Services. "We don't want to stifle it by managing it to death. We're trying to find the balance between putting the tool in the hands of a process business unit and providing the right sort of guidance." Communications Week, Jan 27, 1997 How To Judge A First-Rate Network If trying to rate the best Intranet is like a beauty contest, actually finding the Intranet that works best for a particular business is more like a good marriage; not as flashy but more satisfying over the long haul. Most observers hold up a handful of companies as having truly innovative Intranets: Boeing Co. (www.boeing.com) has implemented an Intranet that revolutionized the aircraft company's manufacturing processes... Interactive Week, May 26, 1997 Boeing: Fighting the HR Paper Dragon ...Boeing's recent merger with McDonnell Douglas and the acquisition of Rockwell's aerospace and defense businesses formed a company that expanded the horizons of aerospace - as well as that of Boeing People Services. The company's expansion magnified the need to have integrated employee systems. Observes Mike O'Shea, a technology architect for Boeing's Payroll Computing Systems: "HR and payroll employees were spending a lot of time on the phone chasing information updates. Processes dealing with employee requested updates or information often involved the transfer and handling of special forms...it took four months for the Boeing development team to develop and deploy the "My Information" web site to employees on the company's intranet... "We processed over 100,000 update transactions via the web over 3 months time. Although it's difficult to quantify the savings exactly," O'Shea added, "we can assume this many transactions done via special form handling or helpdesk support would have had a much higher cost per transaction." NetDynamics Whitepaper, Nov 7, 1997 More Than Electronic Commerce ...Boeing, like many large companies, has used EDI for years to swap purchase orders, invoices, and other documents with partners. But EDI merely automates an existing process; in the past year, Boeing has learned how the Web can transform a business...But cost-cutting is neither the main goal nor the key benefit. "This changes the way the airlines work with us," says Tom DiMarco, senior manager of airline logistics support systems at Boeing. InformationWeek, Dec 15, 1997 Dow Jones in Action: A Case for Listening to the Customer ...As the world's largest aerospace firm, The Boeing Company relies heavily on the knowledge and technical expertise required to realize its mission of being "the number one aerospace company in the world and among the premier industrial concerns in terms of quality, profitability, and growth."... In 1993, the Technical Libraries were asked to provide content from commercially published external information sources to Boeing's intranet. (Boeing's strategy is for all employees to use the intranet and the World Wide Web as their primary communications tool)... DowLine, Jan 1998 Racing for Business on the Internet ...Boeing, whose website is approaching 1 million pages, spent a lot of time developing policies and procedures for Internet use. Rules vary for employees accessing the system internally, those select customers or partners allowed through the secure perimeter of the website into specific areas, and those visiting the external site. Graeber Jordan, who oversees Boeing's web development, says a system capable of adapting to change is key to a successful web operation..."As you hit a pothole, you have to have a process to pave over [it] and keep going." Washington CEO Magazine; May, 1998 Companies are using Net tech to forge new partnerships and pile up eye-popping savings ...Boeing Co. (BA) has booked $100 million in spare-parts orders from airlines in the last year through a Web site that took just seven months to build...The projects range from modest changes such as new ways to distribute airplane-service bulletins, all the way up to planned sharing of massive online databases tracking the history of every plane Boeing sells. Some innovations, such as sending required documents to the federal government over the Net, ''were so obvious that we didn't even go through the normal cost-justification process,'' says Graeber Jordan, Boeing's senior manager for electronic-commerce deployment. Developing Web programs is relatively low-risk, which encourages companies to try novel ideas. ''The Web is an insidious process-reengineering tool,'' says Jordan. Business Week, Jun 22, 1998 Stock up on intranet tools At Boeing Aerospace, Nolan says, "we have started down the path of redeploying all our core systems using Web technology." Intranet Journal, Aug 9, 1998 R&D Groups Seize The Web Moment ...At Boeing Co., Chuck Kahler, vice president of the Boeing Commercial Airplane Group, Wing Responsibility Center, tells of a time when a supplier was late for a delivery. Boeing was able to prove that it was the supplier's fault since it tracks everything on its Partners Network extranet that reaches every supplier dealing with Boeing... InternetWeek, Sep 14, 1998 Portal power - Corporate portals will open up your intranet ...Swenson [search engine manager] is charged with making the more than 1,000 Web sites on Boeing's intranet containing more than 1.5 million pages of information accessible to 160,000 users... InfoWorld, Oct 5, 1998 Scalability, Power, Reliability, Ease Noted as Keys to Deployment ...Boeing's intranet includes over 160 thousand browsers, and over one million documents in the index. The system handles approximately 20 thousand queries per day and over 400 thousand a month... Infoseek, Oct 5, 1998 Boeing's Big Intranet Bet -- Beset with cost overruns and production snafus, aerospace giant extends Web to the shop floor Topping the aerospace giant's list of remedies is a series of intranet and extranet applications designed to drive production and logistical information to all corners of the company and out to suppliers and partners, in an effort to keep production humming... InternetWeek, Nov 6,1998 Web-Enabled To The Core The IT department has to learn to let go. That's part of the message from Terence Milholland, CIO and vice president of information services for The Boeing Co., who is spearheading the aerospace giant's creation of virtual factory applications to help tune production and reduce costs. InternetWeek,
Nov 16, 1998 Luft under vingarna Trots varsel om uppsägningar och hot om sämre vinst finns det en sak som Boeing ... itAffärer, Sweden, Feb 1, 1999 Intranet Overload: Maverick intranets a challenge for IT Intranets are sprouting like weeds in large corporations. Inappropriate content for a business-oriented intranet - whether a personal page, offensive information or sensitive company data - is another persistent concern among companies with loosely controlled intranets. Jordan has found that the vast majority of employees stick to the Boeing guidelines that govern proprietary information in any format. Not wanting to send a "chill factor" through the employee ranks, Boeing prefers to deal with wayward sites quietly, Jordan said. "We try not to condemn the 99.9%," he said, "for the weirdness of one or two." ComputerWorld, Mar 15, 1999 Boeing achieves Internet liftoff ...Few companies in any industry, however, can rival Boeing as an Internet innovator. PC Week, May 10, 1999 Business @ the Speed of Thought ...At Marriott's request, its Web developer, fine.com, arranged for sessions at Boeing, which has probably the largest intranet in the United States, and Microsoft, which has one of the most active Internet sites... What makes Boeing's efforts unique is the degree to which it plans to integrate digital data from end to end, including integration with its partners, and the sheer scale of the intellectual and manufacturing processes that it is digitizing. The company already operates the largest Web-based parts-ordering system in the world and is using digital tools to bring together virtual teams such as its collaboration with Lockheed Martin on the new F-22 fighter. All told, Boeing believes its efforts will cut 30 to 40 percent of its production costs. Customers.com ...The web site design focused on giving customers access to the actual parts inventory information. But first, Boeing needed to worry about security. It couldn't have one airline looking at information that was destined for a competitive airline; for example, TWA has negotiated different terms and conditions than United and the two airlines may not use the same models of planes. So the project team hooked the Web application into a two- step security authentication process. The first level of authentication gives the customer access to Boeing's secure spare parts Web site. The second level gives each customer the correct permissions in the database, which contains the parts pricing and interchangability information that's appropriate for that company as well as the inventory levels and location of the parts... Caught in the Web ..."If you try to manage something this big from a central source, it will never get this big." Jordan said, speaking from Boeing's Internet demonstration room at corporate headquarters. "If you want to have a tool that can be used by anybody, [to] do anything, it needs to be organic."... Puget Sound Business Journal, Jul 16, 1999 Boeing Profits and Labor Issues Live interview with Steve Scher, KUOW, host; Peter Conti, The Boeing Company; Bill Whitlow, Safeco Market Analyst; Phil Johnson, International Association of Machinists ...Scher "Now I was reading about Boeing's Internet business and the different divisions that are involved in the intranet as well as the internet, and one of the things that I read was that it wasn't heavily managed, that each division was allowed to come up with their own ideas or designs and that it was more democratic in the way it evolved. Is that the model [for relations with the union]? Conti "That is potentially one model, yes. The evolution of the internet and intranet within Boeing is that it was a participative process. It was also very much hands off, there wasn't a central dictum put down of how it should flow out. It has evolved to having some procedures and policies put in place as a result, but nevertheless it evolved over time. That's what we are looking for across the board in the company - is harnessing the power and intellect of all the employees and trying to move out on what they think is best for the company as well as in concert with the leadership's desires and visions." Scher "Does that seem like a model that could work for machinist as well on the floor?" Johnson "Sure, I don't find it be a problem. Like some of the concerns of our members when you talk about the high performance work organization or talk about lean manufacturing is that in process improvement people get better at doing their job so it eliminates jobs. What we are saying is that 50% of the airplane is produced outside of Boeing so rather than seeing a reduction in our jobs if process improvements comes into place and they're more efficient we can see some of that work coming back into the company. And we have been able to see that."... Weekday, KUOW National Public Radio, September 1, 1999, 9-10 am Other sources: ComputerWorld,
Oct 1997
M. Graeber Jordan |