Boeing

Boeing [NYSE: BA] today named Joy Romero president, Boeing Canada Operations, Ltd. and general manager of Boeing Winnipeg reporting to Pat McKenna, vice president and general manager of Boeing Fabrication -- the largest components supplier to Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Romero led Boeing's Salt Lake City components manufacturing site before assuming this position.

Prior to her transition to Commercial Airplanes from Integrated Defense Systems in 2005, Romero was director of business excellence for Army Systems in Philadelphia. There she led the Baldrige National Quality Program and implemented criteria for performance excellence as an overarching business model. Romero joined Boeing/Rockwell in 1982 as an engineer on the B-1B Lancer and later held leadership positions for B-1B Lancer, C-17 Globemaster III and Air Traffic Management programs.

A graduate of Pepperdine University with a Bachelor of Science in business management, Romero also earned a Master of Science in systems management from the University of Southern California and a graduate certificate in advance program management from the Department of Defense Systems Management College.

Integral to the company's global supply chain, Boeing Winnipeg is a division of Boeing Canada Operations, Ltd. -- a wholly owned subsidiary of the company's Commercial Airplanes business unit. Located in the Manitoba province of Canada, Boeing Winnipeg opened in 1971 with 50 employees. Since, Boeing Winnipeg has led the way establishing a $1.2 billion aerospace industry cluster that thrives in the region. Over 1,400 employees now work at the Winnipeg site, which is the largest aerospace composite manufacturer in Canada and the country's third largest aerospace facility.

As a manufacturing area of excellence, Boeing Winnipeg produces complex composite components for all Boeing 700-series commercial jets, such as engine thrust reverser blocker doors, engine strut forward and aft fairings and ducts.

Boeing Winnipeg also serves as a tier-one supplier partner on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the company's all-new airplane which enters service in 2008. In this role, Boeing's Winnipeg site has responsibility for design, integration and delivery of the Dreamliner's wing-to-body fairing, main landing gear door, crown fairing and vertical fin fairing.

The team also supports 787 test programs evaluating composite manufacturing processes, with plans to deliver production parts to program supplier, Vought, including composite shear ties for sections 47 and 48 and forward and aft pylon fairings. Production of the composite shear ties represents Boeing Winnipeg's first primary structure work statement since implementation of the site's strategic business plan to transition into higher complexity composite component manufacturing.