波音公司电子化优势分析MBAdissertation
波音公司在成熟的市场运营中,面临着市场需求下降,新飞机技术创新步伐放缓,高循环性的商业客机市场的依赖等问题,都使公司变得更加脆弱。飞机制造商被价格竞争所困扰,不得不严重削减成本和搁置创新项目,这对波音飞机的效率和竞争力都产生了不利的影响。波音公司过时的飞机生产模型都是效率低下的,还导致了生产延误,业务损失和竞争劣势。
上世纪90年代末,波音公司面临的机遇是:波音公司面临的挑战迫使它开拓新的机会:
扩大相邻的市场进入战略并购,将补充其核心能力。
避免其在商业客机市场周期性的严重依赖,需在国防部门寻求增长机会。
查看存储库的飞机数据和详细的客户知识。
建立其核心竞争力,为其现有的客户基础提供服务。
波音公司电子化的优势是什么?它是如何连接到公司的战略?
根据姆穆尼,波音高级策略师说:“电子化的优势是做事的方式,这不是一个有形的产品或服务。” 术语电子化优势反映了一个概念,利用IT解决方案以整体的方式创建一个无缝互连网络,还可以实时提供重要信息。
Boeing was operating in a mature market facing declining market demand, a slowing pace of new airplane technology innovation and dependence on highly cyclical commercial jetliner market added to its vulnerability.The airplane manufacturers segment was plagued by price competition, forcing severe cost cuts and having to put innovative projects on hold; both adversely affecting Boeings efficiency and competitiveness.Boeings dated production model proved inefficient, leading to production delays, business loss and competitive disadvantage.
Opportunities faced by Boeing in the late 1990s: The challenges that Boeing faced compelled it to explore new opportunities like:
Expanding in adjacent markets by entering into strategic mergers and acquisitions that would complement its core capabilities.
To seek growth opportunities in the defense sector in order to hedge its heavy reliance on the cyclical commercial jetliner market.
To look into options to leverage repository of its airplane data and detailed customer knowledge.
To build on its core competencies by offering services in addition to airplanes, to its existing customer base.
What is the e-Enabled Advantage? How did it link to the company’s strategy?
As Tim Mooney, Boeings Senior Strategist put it, "The e-Enabled Advantage is a way of doing things, it’s not one tangible product or service." The term e-Enabled Advantage reflects a concept which makes use of IT solutions in a holistic manner creating one seamlessly interconnected network that could deliver crucial information in real time. By integrating all the data and information systems relating to airplane maintenance, flight operations, and passenger needs, the e-Enabled Advantage would help airlines increase their operational efficiencies; which was considered key to airlines survival. It would help airlines cut costs and improve efficiency of their maintenance operations by providing them the information tool to convert a non-routine maintenance problem into scheduled /schedulable tasks; Boeing claimed that the use of e-Enable Advantage “had the potential to improve reliability by 0.5% and decrease costs by $100 per hour out of $400 per hour total maintenance costs.” It would also help improve dispatch reliability, reduce delays and cancellations, improve passenger services, enhance aviation security, and provide real-time situational awareness for both flight crew and airline operations centers.#p#分页标题#e#
By early 2000s it was clear that airlines survival was largely dependent on increasing operational efficiencies and Boeing launched the e-Enabled Advantage strategy to use IT to drive cost savings, revenue growth and asset efficiency creating for itself a "virtuous cycle” of innovation, productivity and increasing returns. Boeing saw an opportunity to leverage its e-Enabled Advantage strategy to quickly and effectively respond to the need for the airlines to cut operating costs and improve efficiencies on a day to day basis. Converting this vision into reality would require Boeing to clearly define its future course of action, like the kind of partnerships that it would need to enter into to complement its core capabilities, the standards and technologies that it would need to develop and how it would coordinate the various segments of the e-Enabled environment that existed in different areas of the company. It would have to make organizational and design choices that would create synergy and minimize cannibalization.
What advantages would such an approach give Boeing?
Even though Boeing realized that e-Enabling will never be the sole reason that people buy its airplanes, it will certainly help create a preference for Boeing airplanes in the marketplace. (Scott Carson, 2005) It was clear that the key to airline survival was operating efficiencies and that the future airplanes would have to be networked to airlines information systems; it was a matter of who would cease the opportunity to be a market leader in e- Enabling. The e-Enabled Advantage strategy enabled Boeing to leverage its vast repository of airplane data and its detailed customer knowledge to create new business opportunities. It allowed Boeing to become much more agile, innovative and entrepreneurial and better equipped to help the maritime industry be interconnected in real time and help the airlines cut operating costs on a day to day basis.
Boeings e-Enabled platform allowed it to offer a single point of contact to its customers increasing customer satisfaction and preference for its airplanes. Further, Boeing designed its e-Enabled Advantage to be independent of airplane manufacturer that is it would work on both Boeing and Airbus plane; there by Boeing created for itself a large market of both new and old Boeing and Airbus airplanes. The e-Enabled Advantage allowed Boeing to create for itself a sustainable advantage allowing it to transition from being an airplane manufacturer to being a provider of integrated services to the entire maritime industry.
What challenges did Boeing face in executing such as a radical new strategy?
As Boeing implemented its e-Enabled Advantage strategy to exploit the power of its emerging IT infrastructure, it faced a number of challenges. Successful execution of such a radical new strategy would require Boeing to adopt a comprehensive approach to organization design, focusing on realignment of capabilities within four key areas of business model design:processes and infrastructure, people and partners, organization and culture and leadership and governance. It was not surprising that Boeing faced the following challenges:#p#分页标题#e#
This shift from being an airline manufacturer to becoming provider of integrated services required much more than technological advancement; it was a cultural shift for its executives and employees who had to embrace this new concept to be able to help its customers to make best use of this revolutionary service.
Boeing’s customers still viewed it as an airplane provider and were not able to think of it as a service provider.
The e-Enabled Advantage was a concept, an intangible product and Boeing faced the challenge of convincing skeptical customers of its benefits. Boeing would have to find a way to quantify the value that the customers could accrue with the use of various products and services within its e-Enabled suit.
Boeing faced the task of figuring out how to separate the value created by its airline services from the value created by the airplanes themselves; it was important for Boeing to establish that its e-Enabled platform had the potential of improving the day to day operations and performance of its customers business.