AEROSPACE

Boeing Expects to Cut Delivery Times : Senior executives of Boeing Co. have told the company’s top management they expect to halve the time it takes to deliver aircraft to customers over the next three years and to cut it in half again thereafter. A Boeing spokesman over the weekend confirmed reports in Seattle newspapers that Boeing President Philip Condit had told 600 top managers in early March that production time should be cut. The world’s largest maker of commercial jetliners said in January that a worldwide slump in air travel and delayed deliveries will force it to cut production by 35% through mid-1994, and it subsequently said it would reduce employment by mid-1994 by 28,000 jobs, or one in five workers, through layoffs and attrition. But Condit and Boeing Chairman Frank Shrontz said in remarks to the managers’ meeting, held March 9, that this is no reason to slow the company’s plans to improve productivity. The Boeing Commercial Airplane Group, which accounts for about 80% of Boeing’s revenue and controls about a 60% share of the overall world jetliner market, has already been working to reduce the 12-month to 18-month “cycle time.”