BOEING'S GLOBAL ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY PROCESS

Over the last three years, The Boeing Company has collaborated across its business units (Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Integrated Defense Systems, and Phantom Works) to establish and operate a systems-engineering-based and strategically-driven process for managing the enterprise technology portfolio. This article explains some of the approaches, outcomes and lessons learned from this effort.

The Global Enterprise Technology System (GETS) is the technology management process for the central research and development of Boeing, a $54-billion-a-year aerospace company. The 1997 merger of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas brought together two complementary aerospace companies, each with roughly $25 billion per year in revenue and a diverse range of technology-based products. Today the combined company serves customers in 145 countries with products and services that include:

* Commercial airplanes and related products and services.

* Defense products such as military airplanes, rotor-craft, missiles, communications systems, and services.

* Space products, such as satellites, launch vehicles, and services.

* A growing array of advanced networked system-of-systems products for both commercial and defense applications.

This diversity of products and services draws on an even wider array of technologies, all of which are evolving at various rates, constantly opening up new opportunities. One of the ways Boeing meets the varied needs of these markets is through a focused research organization called Boeing Phantom Works, often referred to as the "catalyst of innovation" for the enterprise. Phantom Works is Boeing's central research organization, and contains a number of R&D programs, or "thrusts," which address areas of common technology needed for our diverse product lines. This R&D focuses on technologies that are of broad use across Boeing's current and future product lines, enabling these product areas to more quickly and efficiently execute their plans for new products, services and features.

Boeing Phantom Works contains a varied portfolio addressing the needs of many technologies, including structures and manufacturing, advanced electronics, system-of-systems and network-centric operations, and advanced services. The portfolio also addresses needs for advanced engineering processes, methods and tools. The GETS process guides the management of this collection.

Objectives and Challenges

A large enterprise must have an approach to managing innovation across many areas in a manner that is focused and connected, without hindering creativity. Without a clear and systematic process for managing innovation, a company can default into a "personality-driven" approach to research decisions. With personality-driven R&D, the portfolio is based more on preferences and hunches than on a systematic view of the whole company and its opportunities. Personality-driven research management is risky, because decisions can easily fail to consider a broad enough set of strategic inputs.

In developing the GETS process, Boeing had several key objectives. The process should be:

* Highly collaborative, drawing many types of participants together in the innovation process.

* Systematic, applying systems engineering principles and process concepts.

* Lean, enabling enterprise-level R&D to respond effectively and efficiently to Boeing business needs.

* Continuous, enabling management of the portfolio in response to changes in our needs and opportunities as they arise.

* Traceable, ensuring clear linkage of R&D efforts to business needs.

* Promote a high level of innovation, experimentation and discovery.

* Enable longer-term R&D to be properly related to near-term R&D.

* Draw appropriately from external and global sources of R&D such as labs, universities and other companies.

* Manage complexity in a fashion that enables participants to know what they need to know and when they need to know it, without being overwhelmed with details they do not need.

* Be simple and clear, allowing people to quickly see how they can contribute and collaborate with others.

By nature, a large multi-business enterprise involves a level of complexity that can be a challenge for any cross-enterprise process. To bridge the diversity in our businesses while enhancing innovation would require the process to cut through this complexity and balance many demands. The process would need to simultaneously deliver near-term value and explore long-term opportunities.

We sometimes refer to this marriage of near-term value and long-term exploration as "pay-as-you-go" R&D. R&D must respond to strategic needs of the business continuously over time, and respond to them in a way that simultaneously accelerates development of new products, reduces unnecessary duplication, and paves the way to meeting long-term objectives. It must fulfill near-term needs while enabling long-term vision. Key challenges in this effort include:

1. How to establish a methodology by which the major supported business areas can capture and communicate their evolving strategic needs, then bring them together and identify the synergistic technology areas that matter most to our business over time.

2. How to facilitate a dialog among the product developers and the technologists that provides both a "push" and a "pull" for technology development.

3. How to help people who are responsible for a particular part of the process to see how they fit into the whole, and to provide them with flexible methods to carry out their part in an effective, informed and connected way.

4. How to manage the inherent complexity of the wide range of technologies represented in our products, services and markets.

5. How to appropriately leverage external sources of technological innovation.

6. How to harvest more cross-discipline innovations, such as those combining emerging technologies from multiple areas to form innovative solutions.

The GETS Approach

Over the last three years, the process has been constructed and improved using a series of enterprise technology management exercises involving key participants in the enterprise R&D technology management process from the major business units. These exercises fell into five stages:

1. R&D Process Needs Assessment.- Boeing possesses a generic model of technology and product development management that can be used as a guide in establishing R&D management processes for different parts of the enterprise. This model focuses on the key process requirements that the enterprise should consider in order to innovate for the future of its products and technologies. This model helped the group to begin by asking a broad set of questions as they considered developing the initial process framework.

2. Process Development Workshops.- Conduct process development workshops and shape the initial process for the central portfolio, drawing from the generic process model. Use the generic model to surface and explore possible approaches. From this dialog, a preliminary process was outlined, which contained the basic process steps required for this particular kind of portfolio. These process steps were then populated with appropriate methods.

3. Formal Inspection.- Conduct a broad-based formal inspection of the process, bringing together key process stakeholders, such as the leaders of product development and technology development organizations. These reviews broadened the understanding and buy-in, and contributed many improvements to the initial process. More than 250 comments were gathered and addressed. One benefit of the formal inspection process is that it served to educate various stakeholders in the contrasting needs of others and captured solutions on paper in a way that sought to consider the system as a whole.

4. Deployment and Continuous Improvement.- As the process has been applied to manage the evolution of the Phantom Works portfolio, it has been taught and refined, and many groups throughout the company have been engaged in depth. Various methods within the process are being continuously improved to help organizations work together to achieve our business goals.

5. Process Extension.- The same generic process model used to develop the original process can also be used to facilitate the extension of this process in new ways to cover different areas of the business, such as external R&D relationships. The approach is the same: begin with the reference model, assess the key goals and context of the process in view, then shape a local process that is clear, relevant and connected. For example, a recent collaboration with several of Boeing's international subsidiaries used this approach to establish a new basis for working together in R&D.

What the Process Looks Like

The overall process consists of four continuous processes, sometimes called "The Four D's": Discover, Decide, Develop, Deploy (Figure 1 ). We think of these as four parallel processes that operate continuously at various levels. Each stage represents a different type of thinking or logic that people must apply in order to bring an innovation to maturity for the business (Figure 2). Considering these different kinds of thinking helps us to balance the business, technical, cultural, and social aspects of the process. The concepts of each stage are summarized in Figures 3 and 4.

To understand how the process works, we need to recognize that the four D's are actually four separate processes operating in parallel. In a very real sense, we are continually discovering, deciding, developing, and deploying innovations. Here's a simplified walk-through of the various stages:

First, the various product groups take time to explore their opportunities and challenges based on the most current information. They are encouraged to consider both current and longer-term trends, recognizing that the farther out we look, the greater the uncertainty. These more forward-looking concepts inform the general directions of our efforts over time. This exploration involves a dialog that brings together technologists, product specialists, market analysts, and many others. Each contributes his/her expertise to help surface and understand the opportunities: How do emerging technologies in areas such as advanced structures, avionics or nanotechnology enable the future of our products and services? How do environmental technologies or system-of-systems concepts support the needs of various kinds of customers in the future?

The "Discover" process is rooted in this constant dialog between what is "desirable" in the marketplace and what is "possible" with technology. This creative dialog links together the inherent diversity of the various experts who participate in the process.

The "Decide" process draws on the outcomes of the Discover phase. What have we learned about the future? What new opportunities have surfaced? What assumptions have changed? What areas of emphasis are changing? Deciding requires critical evaluation. Opportunities and needs are examined and prioritized; high-priority areas are compared to understand what common themes are emerging and how they may be changing over time. These thematic needs are used to "seed" the formation of appropriate research efforts to address them.

The "Develop" process is about carrying out the work of the portfolio. Technologists lay out plans for the various selected R&D efforts, then execute them within existing resource constraints to develop the capabilities we will need. This stage emphasizes focus and efficiency in moving toward our technology goals. The projects are continuously reviewed to ensure they are making progress according to plan. These thematic technology programs may grow over time based on ongoing need, producing the crucial technologies we need.

Over time, the capabilities produced in these programs must "Deploy" to more specialized development efforts within our various business units, which are necessary to apply them in future products. The time from discovery to deployment may vary according to the nature of each technology area. Ideally, a well-targeted research program will produce many usable capabilities for our business over time. To be effective at deployment, it is important that we think about deployment early in the innovation process for a given technology.

Applying Systems Engineering to Innovation

We can think of this process as applying the concepts of systems engineering to R&D. Boeing has a long history in large-scale systems engineering. From the development of products such as the new 787 Dreamliner, to the International Space Station, to the custom-built Air Force One, Boeing is known for bringing big products together. That's why, when we think about how to manage R&D for our future products and technologies, we naturally think in terms of applying systems engineering to these early-stage activities. The Four D's apply systems engineering to technology management.

Figure 5 shows how we can think of these stages mapping onto the "systems engineering V" diagram. "Discover" corresponds to developing the requirements for the future, identifying a range of opportunities for product and technology development. "Decide" involves the critical thinking necessary to screen opportunities and design an optimal portfolio in which to invest. "Develop" is carrying out that work using project management best practices, all the while keeping the overall portfolio of projects aligned with the vision. "Deploy" corresponds to getting the technologies and other capabilities delivered and into their intended use within our business.

Results So Far

Since beginning to revise the enterprise R&D planning and management process, the following outcomes can be observed:

* The process has been used for three years to plan Boeing's central research portfolio. This covers the majority of research carried out in the organization, which includes roughly 2,500 researchers and their managers.

* Having a defined and repeatable process has enabled improvements to be successfully implemented each year, to enhance crucial aspects of the process.

* Much stronger working relationships across the value stream from technology to product to market.

* More strategically focused portfolio that delivers greater value of technology to our business units.

* More effective long-term focus, via the employment of longer-term strategic planning and synergy.

* Reduced meetings and travel associated with the central portfolio plan. Meeting and travel time of decision makers in this process was reduced by 80 percent.

* Reduced meeting time to make decisions, because the process leads the group to the decisions that are made. Cycle time for formation of the portfolio was reduced by close to 50 percent; that is, at month six we are nearly as far along in detailing the portfolio plan as we would previously have been in month 11.

* A more flexible technology portfolio to meet the changing needs of the business.

* Reduced complexity and a process that is easier to propagate and apply to new areas.

* Greatly improved visibility of R&D portfolio content by the groups that will use the technologies.

* A solid basis for making better use of external R&D, such as universities, and other sources worldwide, thus accelerating the development and introduction of new and improved products to grow our business.

Recommendations and Lessons Learned

We have found the following principles helpful in evolving better R&D management processes in the context of a diverse enterprise:

* Leverage the business diversity of the enterprise.-Recognize the inherent differences among various business areas of your company, those that serve different markets and customers. Do not force commonality of process for commonality's sake. Seek to understand what "rational commonality" looks like among your businesses, leaving them the flexibility they need while linking them together for effective collaboration.

* Apply basic engineering process improvement disciplines.-Process maturity matters. Establish a process that allows various stakeholders to participate and leads them together to answers that make sense for the business as a whole. Standardize enough of the process to make it repeatable, then focus on improving the process over time.

* Don't forget the human factor in innovation.-Make use of trained facilitators. Engineers and technology leaders produce their best results when they collaborate together meaningfully. This sometimes requires the help of someone who understands group processes to help people collaborate effectively.

* Keep the goal of purposeful innovation in mind.-Our purpose is not to have the world's most meticulous process, but to have enough process structure to achieve momentum in the marketplace by outpacing our competition. This is the ultimate measure of the effectiveness of R&D processes.

* Cultivate synergy throughout the process.-Innovation is not just about one person's great idea; it is about combining many people's new ideas in ways that produce new capabilities that cannot typically be achieved by only one function or technical expert. Our best innovations tend to combine new capabilities from several areas to provide compelling functionality for our customers.

* Make your process and methods clear.-Process clarity and simplicity helps people to quickly see how they can get involved and contribute their energies and ideas. This is especially true of R&D processes, as almost any new idea requires multiple functions to bring it to reality.