A six-week Federal Aviation Administration audit of Boeing’s production of the 737 Max jet found dozens of problems throughout the manufacturing process at the plane maker and one of its key suppliers, according to a slide presentation reviewed by The New York Times.
The air safety regulator launched the review after a door panel blew off a 737 Max 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight in early January. Last week, the agency announced that the audit had found “multiple instances” in which Boeing and the supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, did not comply with quality control requirements, although it did not provide details of the findings.
The presentation reviewed by the Times, while highly technical, offers a more detailed picture of what emerged from the audit. Since the Alaska Airlines episode, Boeing has come under intense scrutiny over its quality control practices, and the findings add to the body of evidence about the company’s manufacturing errors.
For the portion of the review that focused on Boeing, the FAA conducted 89 product inspections, a type of review that examines aspects of the manufacturing process. The plane maker passed 56 of the inspections and failed 33 of them, with a total of 97 cases of alleged non-compliance, according to the filing.
The FAA also conducted 13 product inspections for the part of the investigation focused on Spirit AeroSystems, which makes the fuselage, or body, of the 737 Max. Six of those audits resulted in passing grades and seven in failing grades, the presentation said.
At one point during the examination, the air safety agency observed engineers on Spirit using a hotel key card to check a door seal, according to a document outlining some of the findings. That action was “not identified/documented/referred to in the production order,” the document said.
In another instance, the FAA saw Spirit engineers apply Dawn liquid soap to a door seal “as a lubricant in the fitting process,” according to the document. The door seal was then cleaned with a damp cloth, the document said, noting that the instructions were “vague and unclear as to what specifications/actions should be followed or recorded by the engineer.”
Asked about the appropriateness of using a hotel key card or Dawn soap in these cases, Spirit spokesman Joe Buccino said the company “reviews all identified non-conformances for corrective action.”
Boeing did not immediately comment on the results of the audit. In late February, the FAA gave the company 90 days to develop a plan for quality control improvements. In response, its chief executive, Dave Calhoun, said “we have a clear picture of what needs to be done,” citing the audit’s findings in part.
Boeing said this month it was in talks to buy Spirit, which it launched in 2005. Mr. Buccino said Monday that Spirit had received preliminary audit findings from the FAA and planned to work with Boeing to address what the regulatory authority had raised. He said Spirit’s goal was to reduce the number of defects and errors in its processes to zero.
“In the meantime, we are continuing our multiple efforts to improve our safety and quality programs,” said Mr. Buccino. “These improvements focus on human factors and other steps to minimize non-conformities.”
The FAA said it could not provide details about the inspection because of its ongoing investigation into Boeing in response to the Alaska Airlines incident. In addition to that investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating what caused the door to blow off the plane, and the Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation.
During the FAA’s review, the agency deployed as many as 20 controllers to Boeing and about half a dozen to Spirit, according to the slide presentation. Boeing assembles the 737 Max at its plant in Renton, Wash., while Spirit builds the plane’s fuselage at its plant in Wichita, Kan.
The audit at Boeing was wide-ranging, covering many parts of the 737 Max, including its wings and a variety of other systems.
Many of the problems auditors found fell under the category of not following an “approved process, procedure or manufacturing order,” according to the presentation. Some other issues related to quality control documentation.
An audit dealt with the component that blew up the Alaska Airlines jet, known as a door plug. Boeing failed that check, according to the filing. Some of the issues highlighted by this audit related to quality control inspection and documentation, although the exact findings were not detailed in the presentation.
The FAA’s examination also investigated how well Boeing employees understood the company’s quality control procedures. The agency interviewed six of the company’s engineers and scored their responses, and the overall average score came to only 58 percent.
An inspection on the Spirit that focused on the door plug assembly found five problems. One of those problems, the filing said, was that Boeing “failed to provide evidence of minor design change approval in accordance with a method acceptable to the FAA.” It was not clear from the presentation what the design change was.
Another check involved the door plug installation and was among those the Spirit failed. The audit raised concerns about Spirit’s technicians who carried out the work and found that the company “failed to identify the knowledge necessary to operate its processes”.
Other inspections Spirit failed included one involving a cargo door and another involving the installation of cockpit windows.
