Boeing

One of the aviation industry's largest annual conferences presented its "Innovation Award" to Boeing Commercial Airplane Group in recognition of service enhancements initiated by the Boeing spare-parts support organization.

Darce H. Lamb, Boeing vice president of Airline Logistics Support, accepted the award April 15 at the 1997 Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul (MRO) Conference in Dallas, Texas. The annual event is organized by the Aviation Week Group of the McGraw-Hill Companies in association with the Canaan Group Ltd., a management consulting firm.

The MRO award nominating committee narrowed its field of candidates to three premier suppliers of products to the civil and military markets. The full MRO advisory board selected Boeing, which concurred with the nominating committee's view that Boeing set the industry standard for responsiveness through "the latest information technology, a state-of-the-art fulfillment facility, forward stocking locations, outside logistics capability, and 24-hour-a-day order entry, tracking and troubleshooting process."

The Boeing spares distribution system processes about 1.2 million shipments of spare parts annually and maintains an inventory of 50 million individual parts. Shipments are sent from seven Boeing distribution centers worldwide, including the Seattle main distribution facility, which is equipped with the latest in materials handling technology. For added customer convenience and efficiency, Boeing recently introduced the industry's first web site for ordering spare parts over the Internet.