Difficult job of Supplier Management at Boeing

Filed in archive Employment on June 17, 2008

Seattle Times had a nice article recently covering the life and career of Bob Noble, Vice President of Supplier Management for Boeing's Dreamliner.

The article described Bob's job in his own words: "Very, very stressful.". One funny thing which I read in the article was related to a doctor visit:

On a recent doctor's visit, said Noble, The Nurse checked his blood pressure and exclaimed, "Oh my God, it's really high."

Noble, who had his BlackBerry in hand, told her he knew why. "I just read an e-mail that pissed me off. Give me five minutes to answer this e-mail."

With all these supplier integration issues, he sees the problems manageable because as he mentions, part problems have always been an issue for the new product launches. But the key question is: How much more we should wait to see DreamLiner coming out?

The article doesn't respond to this question...