The Boeing Company
Founded in 1916 by William Boeing, The Boeing Company is a multinational corporation that specializes in aircraft. Since its beginning, the company has designed airplanes, as well as rockets and satellites. Currently based in Chicago, United States, the company is led by CEO Dennis Muilenburg. In 2016, the aircraft manufacturing company gained an impressive revenue of $94.6 billion in sales, placing the company on the Forbes Fortune 500 list. While successful, the company relies heavily on exported material, a strategy that began in the early 2000s. The company quickly became the biggest exporter in the United States.
With a new avionics unit, the company's goal is to "to build targeted vertical capability so that [they] can further drive cost down and value up for [their] customers, in all phases of a product's life cycle." This is a clever move, given Boeing's history with its 787 Dreamliner plane. Due to the vast amount of exported items implemented into the aircraft, the Boeing Company found itself spending billions more than intended, as well as a three-year delay during the construction of the plane. By designing their own material, the Boeing Company will be able to save money, and potentially sell their items to other aircraft manufacturers. These items, according to the company, will include "avionics systems such as those designed for navigation, flight controls, information systems and other core avionics." In addition, the creation of products will not only make the Boeing brand even more known across the world, but also contribute to a future of new products never seen before. After creating its own market through personalized avionics, the company plans to provide systems for military and space vehicles throughout the year 2020 and beyond.
By 2019, the new avionics will reportedly hire about 600 people, a vastly higher number than the 120 employees the division has now. However, this future does not seem to be so near: the mass avionics producer was already forced to get rid of 15,000 jobs across the entire company.
Although the company has just recently announced the new, money-saving strategy, its soon-to-be former suppliers have already taken quite a hit on Wall Street. Boeing's plans to construct and sell their own avionics led to the stock price of Rockwell Collins Inc falling 6%, while the stock prices of the more diversified companies Honeywell and United Technologies Corp to decrease by almost half a percent. While the stock prices eventually recovered by the next day, the dip in price serves as a indicator of the potential influence the Boeing Company can have in the aircraft manufacturing sector in the future.
