Boeing Company Global Operations Company

Boeing Company Global Operations

Company Global Operations

The Boeing Company is the world's most prominent aerospace company as well as the largest manufacturer of commercial jetliners and military aircraft combines. Boeing also manufactures rotorcraft, electronic and defense systems, missiles, satellites, launch vehicles, and advanced information and communications systems (MIT, 2010). Boeing is a major service provider to NASA, operating the Space Shuttle as well as the International Space Station. Boeing offers a variety of military and commercial airline support services and has customers in more than 90 countries around the globe and is one of the largest U.S. exporters in terms of sales (2010). While Boeing is headquartered in Chicago, the company employs more than 160,000 people across the United States and in 70 countries (2010).

After 9/11, The Boeing Company was hit hard as commercial air travel decreased significantly. Nearly fifty-five percent of Boeing's business is devoted to commercial aircraft manufacturing. Today Boeing is one of the United States' top exporters and the company has begun to make a shift in the way they run their business -- from being an American company that exports to the world to being a truly global company (GJIA, 2003). Boeing has employees in Australia, they own approximately 35% of Aero Vodochody in the Czech Republic, and they have about 1,000 people working in their design bureau in Moscow (2003).

Boeing has a comparative advantage in research and development, technology and because of this they dominate the aerospace industry. Importing and exporting are the major activities when it comes to international trade and Boeing has proven its comparative advantage through the fact that they are one of the U.S.'s top exporters. Boeing has become synonymous with aircraft carriers and specializing in aerospace products are what have also given Boeing a comparative advantage.

While Boeing is, without question, a leader in its industry, some could argue that Boeing's technical and engineering side is less important these days and their unique assets have more to do with its ability to orchestrate its network of global partners (Silverthorne, 2007). Boeing uses collaboration for its own competitive advantage.

The firm 'orchestrates and integrates' the work of its partners. And critically, these skills are difficult to replicate; harder, we would argue, than any specific piece of technical know-how the firm possesses. Boeing must create the vision for next generation products, select technologies that meet this vision, develop and architecture within which partners can work, and choose partners with the right mix of capability and cost. And this is all before a project starts! Once it begins, there is the challenge of directing and managing globally distributed innovation teams (Silverthorne, 2007).

Globalization has tremendously helped Boeing recover after the global crisis spurred by 9/11 and the fact that people did not feel safe to travel. In the past nine years, the situation has gotten better for Boeing. Expanding trade as well as an expanding tourism market, the volume of goods and people moving from place to place around the world is consistently increasing. As more and more people around the world are able to get out of poverty, domestic travel and cargo markets are also likely to increase (we've already seen this in countries like China and India). In 2005, Boeing's Commercial Market Outlook stated that over the next twenty years, the Asia Pacific region would account for about 36% of total deliveries (Gross, 2005). Looking at Boeing's 2010 Commercial Market Outlook, Boeing notes that most economies in the Asia Pacific region were able to weather the recent economic recession and they are recovering. Boeing states that "with China and India leading the growth among emerging markets, the region's economy will grow at a rate of 4.6% per year for the next 20 years, significantly outpacing the world's average growth rate" (Boeing, 2010).

Boeing notes in its 2010 market outlook that because of rising passengers and cargo traffic, there is the need for a growth in fleet. Boeing must work to modernize their fleets and work to meet the growing demand for travel by air. Asia Pacific airlines is said to need 10,320 new airplanes, "valued at more than $1.3 trillion," over the next two decades (Boeing, 2010).

Boeing predicts that the greatest demand for new aircrafts will come from the United States, then China, and thirdly, the United Arab Emirates -- even though they have a population of fewer than 5 million people, "yet home to several highly competitive airlines" (Boeing, 2010).