Boeing Teams Receive Missouri Quality Awards
Boeing [NYSE: BA] has been named a double winner of the 2003 Missouri Quality Award, the state's official recognition for excellence in quality leadership, during a ceremony in Osage Beach, Mo.
Dr. Elson Floyd, president of the University of Missouri System, presented the awards for manufacturing to the Boeing C-17 team based in St. Louis and the Boeing-led weapons group based in St. Charles, Mo. Awarded by the Excellence in Missouri Foundation, the Missouri Quality Award is modeled after the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and recognizes an organization's success in manufacturing, public sector, education and health care.
The award-winning C-17 program established lean manufacturing as a strategic goal and focused on eliminating waste, simplifying work, and increasing production. It also increased teamwork by providing simultaneous access to vital data to both executive leadership and shop floor workers.
"We're proud and honored to have been named a double winner of the Missouri Quality Award," said John Van Gels, vice president of Operations for Boeing Integrated Defense Systems and site manager for Boeing St. Louis. "These awards are a true testament to the skills, the hard work and innovative spirit of our Missouri teammates"
The C-17 "Globemaster III" transports large, heavy cargo directly to locations with short, austere runways. Its cargo door and ramp, engine pylons, forward fuselage and main landing gear pods are assembled in St. Louis and then moved to final assembly in Long Beach, Calif.
A second Boeing group honored at the banquet was the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) program. The group received the 2003 Missouri Team Quality Award, which recognizes teams that have demonstrated role-model processes to reach their improvement goals.
The JDAM is a weapons guidance system tail kit designed and developed in the early 1990's that brings autonomous, all weather, near precision bombing capability to the United States Air Force and Navy.
A unit of The Boeing Company, Boeing Integrated Defense Systems is one of the world's largest space and defense businesses. Headquartered in St. Louis, Boeing Integrated Defense Systems is a $25 billion business. It provides systems solutions to its global military, government and commercial customers. It is a leading provider of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; the world's largest military aircraft manufacturer; the world's largest satellite manufacturer and a leading provider of space-based communications; the primary systems integrator for U.S. missile defense; NASA's largest contractor; and a global leader in launch services.
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